Books like America in Vietnam by Guenter Lewy

An exhaustive, evidence‑based investigation into the U.S. decision‑making that escalated the Vietnam War, challenging the idea of inevitability by exposing political indifference, self‑interest, and the key roles of McNamara, Bundy, Rusk, Ball, and Taylor.

The Vietnam War, perhaps the mast controversial war Americans have ever fought, remains a source of pain and perplexity. Why did Lyndon Johnson commit the United States to fight? Why did he fail to act more decisively once he resolved on war? And why didn't he take the American public into his confidence? These questions have troubled historians since the end of the war, but the answers have been buried in inaccessible documents. Now Michael H. Hunt uses newly available sources from both American and Vietnamese archives to reevaluate how and why the war started and then escalated. He examines the ideological, strategic, political, and institutional pressures that in the 1950s propelled the Truman and Eisenhower administrations toward intervention in Indochina; the reasons why Kennedy's and Johnson's policymakers believed that a limited war could be fought there; Johnson's early position on Vietnam and his decision to intensify U.S. involvement in the war; and, finally, the tragic consequences of the Vietnam War both at home and abroad. Throughout, he discusses the values, choices, misconceptions, and miscalculations that shaped the long process of American intervention, thus rendering more comprehensible - if no less troubling - the tangled origins of the Vietnam War.

George C. Herring examines the Vietnam War as the inevitable extension of U.S. containment policy from the Truman era, exploring the complex challenges it posed and the varied responses of American leaders and citizens.

"Inside the Pentagon Papers addresses legal and moral issues that resonate today as debates continue over government secrecy and democracy's requisite demand for truthfully informed citizens. In the process, it also shows how a closer study of this signal event can illuminate questions of government responsibility in any era." "When Daniel Ellsberg leaked a secret government study about the Vietnam War to the press in 1971, he set off a chain of events that culminated in one of the most important First Amendment decisions in American legal history. That affair is now part of history, but the story behind the case has much to tell us about government secrecy and the public's right to know." "Inside the Pentagon Papers reexamines what happened, why it mattered, and why it still has relevance today. Focusing on the back story of the Pentagon Papers and the resulting court cases, it draws upon a wealth of oral history and previously classified documents to show the consequences of leak and litigation both for the Vietnam War and for American history."--BOOK JACKET.

In A Time for War, Schulzinger paints a vast yet intricate canvas of more than three decades of conflict in Vietnam, from the first rumblings of rebellion against the French colonialists to the American intervention and eventual withdrawal. His comprehensive narrative incorporates every aspect of the warfrom the military (as seen in his brisk account of the French failure at Dienbienphu) to the economic (such as the wage increase sparked by the draft in the United States) to the political. Drawing on massive research, he offers a vivid and insightful portrait of the changes in Vietnamese politics and society, from the rise of Ho Chi Minh, to the division of the country, to the struggles between South Vietnamese president Diem and heavily armed religious sects, to the infighting and corruption that plagued Saigon. Schulzinger reveals precisely how outside powers - first the French, then the Americans - committed themselves to war in Indochina, even against their own better judgment. Roosevelt, for example, derided the French efforts to reassert their colonial control after World War II, yet Truman, Eisenhower, and their advisers gradually came to believe that Vietnam was central to American interests. The author's account of Johnson is particularly telling and tragic, describing how the president would voice clear-headed, even prescient warnings about the dangers of intervention - then change his mind, committing America's prestige and military might to supporting a corrupt, unpopular regime. Schlzinger offers sharp criticism of the American military effort, and provides a fascinating look inside the Nixon White House, showing how the Republican president dragged out the war long past the point when he realized that the United States could not win. Finally, Schulzinger paints a brilliant political and social portrait of the times, illuminating the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary Americans and Vietnamese. Schulzinger shows what the war was like for a common soldier, an American nurse, a navy flyer, a conscript in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, a Vietcong fighter, or an antiwar protester.