Viet Nam In Brief

The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding. Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese—both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.

Here is the first scholarly book-length analysis of Communist Vietnam's political system. Taking advantage of the unprecedented wealth of revealing documentary material published in Vietnam since 1985, Gareth Porter offers new insights into the functioning of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and its management of the Vietnamese economy and society. He examines the evolution of the system from the time the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was founded in 1945 through the 1986-1990 period of economic liberalization and cautious political reform by the successor regime, the SRV.

Get the Summary of Christopher Goscha's Vietnam in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "Vietnam" by Christopher Goscha presents a comprehensive history of Vietnam, tracing its evolution from a region influenced by Chinese culture and Buddhism to a nation grappling with colonialism, internal strife, and modern statecraft. The book recounts the resistance against Chinese rule, the rise of the independent state of Dai Viet, and the complex interplay of Confucianism, Buddhism, and local traditions in governance. It explores the territorial expansion driven by trade and demographic pressures, the introduction of Catholicism, and the fragmentation of Vietnam into rival regions...

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam. Hanoi's War renders transparent the internal workings of America's most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Using never-before-seen archival materials from the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as materials from other archives around the world, Nguyen explores the politics of war-making and peace-making not only from the North Vietnamese perspective but also from that of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, presenting a uniquely international portrait.