List Price: $20.99 Details

Save: $8.00 (38%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime & FREE Returns

FREE delivery: Sunday, Dec 12 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Fastest delivery: Thursday, Dec 9
Order within 23 hrs and 40 mins Details

In Stock.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app.

$$12.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Returnable until Jan 31, 2022

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery: Wednesday, Dec 15 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by -OnTimeBooks-

Fulfilled by Amazon

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers on Amazon

$18.17
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Book Depository US

$17.92
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Ambis Enterprises

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

Follow the Author

Michael Lind

Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict Paperback – July 16, 2002

by Michael Lind (Author)

69 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$15.99

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$25.34

$21.34

$2.64

Paperback

"Please retry"

$12.99

$10.79

$1.55

Enhance your purchase

What went wrong in Vietnam?
Michael Lind casts new light on one of the most contentious episodes in American history in this controversial bestseller.
In this groundgreaking reinterpretation of America's most disatrous and controversial war, Michael Lind demolishes enduring myths and put the Vietnam War in its proper context -- as part of the global conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Lind reveals the deep cultural divisions within the United States that made the Cold War consensus so fragile and explains how and why American public support for the war in Indochina declined. Even more stunning is his provacative argument that the United States failed in Vietnam because the military establishment did not adapt to the demands of what before 1968 had been largely a guerrilla war.
In an era when the United States often finds itself embroiled in prolonged and difficult conflicts in places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq, Lind offers a sobering cautionary tale to Ameicans of all political viewpoints.

Print length

314 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Free Press
Publication date

July 16, 2002
Dimensions

5.5 x 1 x 8.44 inches
ISBN-10

0684870274
ISBN-13

978-0684870274
See all details

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Mark J. White
16
Paperback
37 offers from $2.55
Michael Lind
360
Hardcover
48 offers from $3.61
Michael Lind
83
Paperback
74 offers from $2.43
Michael G. Kort
6
Paperback
46 offers from $15.99
David Halberstam
68
Paperback
38 offers from $13.20

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Mark J. White
16
Paperback
37 offers from $2.55
Marilyn Young
109
Paperback
147 offers from $0.35
Michael Lind
360
Hardcover
48 offers from $3.61
Michael G. Kort
6
Paperback
46 offers from $15.99
Uta G. Poiger
10
Paperback
40 offers from $6.36
Henry Kissinger
829
Paperback
137 offers from $2.06

Special offers and product promotions

Create your FREE Amazon Business account to save up to 10% with Business-only prices and free shipping.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Dan Rather CBS News Michael Lind is one of the smartest and most gifted writers I know of. He is also one of the bravest, unafraid to tackle the most controversial subjects. Now he turns his formidable attentions to the Vietnam War, and the results will dazzle you. More importantly, this book will make you think. Even if, ultimately, you don't agree with every single provocative analysis Michael Lind provides, I guarantee you will be challenged to reassess and reinvigorate every idea you have received, stockpiled, and taken for granted for three decades. "Vietnam: The Necessary War" is a necessary book -- for anyone who really wants to understand one of the most difficult periods in our history.

Fareed Zakaria managing editor, "Foreign Affairs" A quarter century after its bitter end, Vietnam remains America's most controversial war and Michael Lind's book is sure to set off new sparks about it. Looking at the war from the heights of grand strategy and the inner reaches of domestic politics, Lind makes a fresh, highly intelligent, and passionate case for rethinking the conventional wisdom. Agree with it or not, it is compelling reading.

John Patrick Diggins Distinguished Professor of History, City University of New York Graduate Center Most Americans prefer to forget the Vietnam War. Lind compels us to remember it in all its complexity and tragedy and to consider military and diplomatic possibilities that almost no other author or statesman has though of raising. Moving through the pages of this richly provocative book is an agitated originality.

About the Author

Michael Lind is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the Washington editor of Harper's Magazine. He is also the author of five previous books, including The Next American Nation and Up from Conservatism. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and other publications. He holds a master's degree in international relations from Yale University and a law degree from the University of Texas. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; Reprint edition (July 16, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 314 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0684870274
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0684870274
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.44 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,322,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,245 in Southeast Asia History
- #2,456 in Vietnam War History (Books)
- #4,955 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality

Customer Reviews:
69 ratings

Start reading Vietnam: The Necessary War on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Michael Lind

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Michael Lind is the author of more than a dozen books about U.S. political and economic history, politics and foreign policy. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in The Next American Nation (1995), Hamilton's Republic (1997), What Lincoln Believed (2005), The American Way of Strategy (2006), and Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (2012). His most recent book is The New Class War: How to Save Democracy from The Managerial Elite (2020).

Lind's works of fiction and poetry include The Alamo (1997), named by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of hte best books of the year, and Bluebonnet Girl (2003), illustrated by Kate Kiesler, an Oppenheimer Toy Portfolio Gold Book Award winner.

Educated at the University of Texas and Yale University, Lind is a columnist for Tablet and a contributor to American Affairs, American Compass and Project Syndicate. He has been an editor or staff writer at Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, The New Republic, the National Interest, co-founder of New America, and Assistant to the Director of the U.S. State Department's Center for Foreign Affairs. He has taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Texas.

A fifth generation Texan, Michael Lind lives in his home town of Austin, Texas, where he is Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Austin.

Customer reviews

5 star		70%
4 star		13%
3 star		6%
2 star		8%
1 star		4%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Wayne Lusvardi

The Vietnam War Was Not a Defeat as Lind Says

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is a much needed corrective book to the narrative that the Vietnam War was an unnecessary war. But the author fails to understand that the Vietnam War was not a war of occupation but a war of geographic containment of Communism. I fought in that war. Military from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Australia also fought in that war to contain Communism in Vietnam using the Dominoes Theory of Communist expansion.

At the very end of the book Lind writes: 'The Vietnam war was neither a mistake, nor a betrayal or a crime. It was a defeat". But the war accomplished its goal of containing Communism in Vietnam and not letting it spill into Southeast Asia or unwind the gains of the War with Japan. The Vietnam War was fought to protect Japan from being threatened by Communism and becoming a Communist satellite. The empirical proof that the war was not a defeat is that Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan (the "Asian Tiger" nations) became Capitalist and trading partners after that war, not Communist satellites even though some remained authoritarian. The Vietnam War was misunderstood by American media as also a defeat.

This is an important distinction because the US has been fighting another war of containment of Islamic Revolution in the Middle East that is also misunderstood by the public and the media. Maybe Mid East nations need to resist Islamic Terrorism themselves without US assistance and intervention, but without US help the Mid East would likely be controlled by an organized criminal network called Islamic Terrorism centered in Iran and now joined by the Muslim Brotherhood crime network in Turkey. The Egyptians took back their country in 2012 from this organized crime network.

Lind is an astute intellectual and I have read his other books. But this book omits the central truth that the Vietnam War was a victory for Capitalism and free trade against collectivization and totalitarianism. How Lind could miss this is beyond my comprehension. Two stars and worth reading only to refute the author's thesis.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Nicholas E. Sarantakes

Pushing the Envelope

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2009

Verified Purchase

Lind is a provocative, engaging, and also infuriating writer. In this book on the American experience in Vietnam, he offers up a new take strategy and the balance of power in the Cold War that is extremely different. The United States had to fight in Vietnam and lose (although winning would have been preferable) to prove that its word had meaning and that the allies could count on their American friends. "It was necessary for the United States to escalate the war in the mid-1960s in order to defend the credibility of the United States as a superpower, but it was necessary for United States to forfeit the war after 1968, in order to preserve the American domestic political consensus in favor of the Cold War on other fronts. Indochina was worth a war but only a limited war--and not the limited war that the United States actually fought" (p. xv).

At times the book reads like it was designed for domestic political consumption and winning points on one of the cable talk shows that are broadcast from various parts of the Washington, D.C. area. It is far more sophisticated than what anyone will find on those shows, though.

Lind basically calls it like he sees it and manages to rankle almost anyone who has a stake in American public life: Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, the religious, the military, the antiwar movement and pacifists, the American intellectual community, and the civil rights movement to name just a few. Those few groups that do not get offended in some form from this book are probably not all that important in the first place. In the process, he punctures many myths. Chapter three on the failure of the U.S. military in Vietnam--rejecting the idea popular among veterans that the politicians kept them from winning the war--alone is worth the price of the book. He also goes after the antiwar movement and argues in convincing fashion that it became the witting pawn of the North Vietnamese and that many of the leaders crossed the line between dissent and disloyalty. The chapter on American politics and culture is interesting, but he makes the United States far more historical conscious than is actually the case. It is also difficult to take serious an argument that claims Wisconsin and Oregon are part of New England. Few people will buy all his arguments, but he will make you stop and think a bit.

18 people found this helpful

Helpful

Attitude

Refreshing Approach

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book was a refreshing conservative approach to the rationale attached to the US involvement with the War in Vietnam.

Helpful

Harmonious

A serious topic makes for a delightful reading

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2007

Verified Purchase

Michael Lind has to be either the leading American intellectual alive or, a close competitor for that honor. With this lucid book, I was more than persuaded - indeed swept - into giving credence to Lind's arguments about the importance of the American involvement in Vietnam. Mr Lind draws from many sources in order to bolster his artfully weaved thesis. This book has history, analysis, and even some conjectures that are highly plausible. I am sure this book will become the standard against which similar books will be compared. In case that you are curious, here is Lind's verdict: "The Vietnam War was a just, constitutional and necessary proxy war in the Third World War that was waged by methods that were often counterproductive and sometimes arguably immoral. The war had to be fought in order to preserve the military and diplomatic credibility of the United States in the Cold War, ...."

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Kieran

great for arguments both for war and against it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2018

Verified Purchase

was a superb book, great for arguments both for war and against it

One person found this helpful

Lynton S Bennett

Sensible third way

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 17, 2013

Verified Purchase

Good book Linda argument certainly gives the loony left something to think about does justice to America,s fifty six thousand war dead

One person found this helpful

See all reviews

Buy new: $12.99$12.99 FREE delivery: Sunday, Dec 12 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used: $11.02

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict Paperback – July 16, 2002

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Customers who bought this item also bought

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

About the author

Michael Lind

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$12.99

FREE delivery: Sunday, Dec 12 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used:

$11.02