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Recent Accounts of the Vietnam War—A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Edwin E. Moise
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Abstracts

The Public Broadcasting Service series Vietnam: A Television History is generally sound, and commendably willing to present opinions and judgments on controversial issues.

Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History presents important new information but gives inadequate attention to some fundamental issues; James Harrison's The Endless War contains less original material but deals better with fundamental issues, including the nature and sources of Communist strength in Vietnam.

R. B. Smith, Revolution versus Containment, 1955–1961, volume 1 of An International History of the Vietnam War, tries to cover too much in a short book. Some of the conclusions are not adequately proven.

Ronald Spector's Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960 (the first volume of the United States Army's official history of the Vietnam War) is useful, especially for the periods 1944–1945 and 1956–1960. It slightly exaggerates the speed with which Communist guerrilla warfare developed in South Vietnam between 1957 and 1960.

Type
Perspectives on Vietnam—Three Review Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , February 1985 , pp. 343 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1985

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References

1 Roughly the same error can be found in Karnow, pp. 204, 676, and Harrison, p. 128.

2 Karnow, p. 225.

3 See Moise, Edwin E., Land Reform in China and North Vietnam: Consolidating the Revolution at the Village Level (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), pp. 198–99Google Scholar.

4 Smith, pp. 85–86, 203.

5 Ibid, pp. 201,204.

6 Ibid., pp. 155, 166; seealsop. 281, n. 7.

7 Buckingham, William A. Jr., Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 1961–1971 (Washington, D.C.:Office of Air Force History and U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982)Google Scholar.

8 Bowers, Ray L., The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: Tactical Airlift (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History and U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983)Google Scholar.

9 Maj. Gen.McChristian, Joseph A., The Role of Military Intelligence, 1965–1967 (a volume in the series Vietnam Studies) (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army and U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974)Google Scholar.

10 Hooper, Edwin, Allard, Dean, and Fitzgerald, Oscar, The United States Navy and the Vietnam Conflict, vol. I, The Setting of the Stage to 1959 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Navy and U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 224Google Scholar; see also p. 260.

11 Spector, pp. 312, 313, 330.