Viet Nam Documents Series

Fifty documents, including Vietnam's declaration of independence in 1945, the final declaration of the 1954 Geneva Conference, CIA reports, US presidential addresses, anti-war leaflets, thoughts by Vietnamese and American intellectuals, and statements by the Vietnamese government and NLF. Paper edit

The true story of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the event which inspired Steven Spielberg’s feature film The Post In 1971 former Cold War hard-liner Daniel Ellsberg made history by releasing the Pentagon Papers - a 7,000-page top-secret study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam - to the New York Times and Washington Post. The document set in motion a chain of events that ended not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War. In this remarkable memoir, Ellsberg describes in dramatic detail the two years he spent in Vietnam as a U.S. State Department observer, and how he came to risk his career and freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions that shaped three decades of American foreign policy. The story of one man's exploration of conscience, Secrets is also a portrait of America at a perilous crossroad. "[Ellsberg's] well-told memoir sticks in the mind and will be a powerful testament for future students of a war that the United States should never have fought." -The Washington Post "Ellsberg's deft critique of secrecy in government is an invaluable contribution to understanding one of our nation's darkest hours." -Theodore Roszak, San Francisco Chronicle

Publisher description: This landmark volume at last gives us a full picture from both sides of the Vietnam conflict, from Ho Chi Minh's first call for revolution to the fall of the U.S.-backed government in Siagon. Decision-makers whose words come to us in over 300 documents spanning almost 35 years. Many of these documents come from recently declassified U.S. archives. They combine to show the step-by-step process by which Franklin Roosevelt's early support for Vietnamese independence moved in succeeding administrations to support for French colonial rule, and then to our own direct armed intervention. They form a record, too, of changing North Vietnamese policy as hope of peaceful triumph faded and struggle against vast military odds became a necessity. Charged with a sense of tragic inevitability as American misconceptions compounded themselves and North Vietnamese militancy stiffened, this revelatory compliation gives eloquent answers to agonizing questions raised by one of the great turning points of modern history. Here is what really happened. And here is why.

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War incorporates a spate of new research and a number of recently declassified documents concerning the Vietnam War.