Looking Back on the Vietnam War: A 1990s Perspective on the Decisions, Combat, and Legacies

This text is the first to closely compare and contrast the Gulf and Vietnam Wars on both the war and home fronts. Widely respected experts give a balanced, new perspective on the Vietnam War, based on considerable new primary research to explain the salient factors that contributed to the decision making, air and ground considerations, and outcome. This text, carefully focused for classes in modern American history and military studies, appraises the legacies of the Vietnam War that have been felt in the United States for the last two decades.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Vietnam War--A Look Back, A Look Ahead by William Head Background and Overview Vietnam and Its Wars: An Historical Overview of U.S. Involvement by William Head The Global Dimensions and Legacies of a Brushfire War by Marc Jason Gilbert Decision Making and Policy Makers The Johnson Administration's Conduct of Limited War in Vietnam by George Herring From the Tonkin Gulf to the Persian Gulf: The Devolution of the Senate's Role in War Making by Caroline Ziemke China and the Revisionist Thesis by John Garver The Air War Bombing Our Way Back Home: The Commando Hunt and Menu Campaigns of 1969-1973 by Earl H. Tilford, Jr. Of Demons, Storms, and Thunder: A Preliminary Look at Vietnam's Impact on the Persian Gulf Air Campaign by Mark Clodfelter North Vietnamese Air Defenses During the Vietnam War by Douglas Pike The Ground War If At First You Don't Succeed, Try to Rewrite History: Revisionism and the Vietnam War by John M. Gates Everything is Perfect and Getting Better: The Myths and Measures of the American Ground War in Indochina, 1965-1968 by Larry Cable Legacies The Lessons and Ghosts of Vietnam by Lorenzo Crowell Reflections on the Vietnam War: The Views of a Vietnamese on Vietnamese-American Misconceptions by Bui Diem Selected Bibliography Index

About the Author :
WILLIAM HEAD is Associate Editor for Asia of The Journal of Third World Studies. He is also Historian for the U.S. Air Force at Robins Air Force Base. He is the author of the AF monograph Reworking the Workhorse: The C-141B Stretch Modification Program and an Air Power History article Puff the Magic Dragon: A History of the AC-47 Gunship, among other works on Asian and U.S. military history. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER, Asian Historian and Professor for the U.S. Air Force Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, is the editor of American War in Vietnam (Greenwood, 1987), among other studies of the Vietnam War.