Leftist Vietnam War History

books:


	• Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 Marilyn Young Harper Perennial, 1991 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Leftist Vietnam War History

There is a left wing bias to this book--and it is obvious, so it shouldn't irritate a reader who wants to hear the hippie version of the Vietnam War.

However, the most treacherous thing we did was to abandon South Vietnam--financially and militarily-- while the Soviet Union continued to supply military aid to the North. A conventional Russian supplied North Vietnam Army made the final invasion of South Vietnam in 1975. South Vietnam had no chance.

"Bias"? Please . . .

Young's book is the best single volume detailing the American interventions in Vietnam. Unlike many, Young actually knows something about Vietnam as a country, and unlike many, she meticulously supplies references for her facts almost all of which are to accessible and checkable sources. But my real point in writing this is the idea, put forward by so many outside the profession of history (I am a University prof in a big state school history department) that grasping the disaster of Vietnam for what it was is an example of "bias." Is Young against killing peasants? You bet. Does she think US operations were failures? Sure. They were. It is hard to think rosy thoughts about fighting communism and so forth if you grasp how things went down in Vietnam itself, which is what this book supplies. BTW Young is not pro-North Vietnam and in my opinion feels (rightly) that the US destroyed the NLF ("VC"), a southern-based mass movement, with brutal means, which was a disaster. That and the support for dictators and not elections created the country we see today: run from the north, beholden to the north, yet (of course) ready to tackle capitalism. Will we repeat our inane dry-up-the-sea policies in Iraq?

for more information click here

Good but a bit biased

Very well written, with lots of good reference material. Though I share the authors opposition to the Vietnam War I think she turns a blind eye to some of the atrocities committed by VC and NVA. All in all a good book.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

The first book to give equal weight to the Vietnamese and American sides of the Vietnam war.