| Lyndon Johnson's War: America's Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968 Contributor(s): Hunt, Michael H. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0809016044 ISBN-13: 9780809016044 Publisher: Hill & Wang OUR PRICE: $15.30 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 1997 Annotation: The Vietnam War, perhaps the mast controversial war Americans have ever fought, remains a source of pain and perplexity. Why did Lyndon Johnson commit the United States to fight? Why did he fail to act more decisively once he resolved on war? And why didn't he take the American public into his confidence? These questions have troubled historians since the end of the war, but the answers have been buried in inaccessible documents. Now Michael H. Hunt uses newly available sources from both American and Vietnamese archives to reevaluate how and why the war started and then escalated. He examines the ideological, strategic, political, and institutional pressures that in the 1950s propelled the Truman and Eisenhower administrations toward intervention in Indochina; the reasons why Kennedy's and Johnson's policymakers believed that a limited war could be fought there; Johnson's early position on Vietnam and his decision to intensify U.S. involvement in the war; and, finally, the tragic consequences of the Vietnam War both at home and abroad. Throughout, he discusses the values, choices, misconceptions, and miscalculations that shaped the long process of American intervention, thus rendering more comprehensible - if no less troubling - the tangled origins of the Vietnam War. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - 20th Century - History | Asia - Southeast Asia - History | Military - Vietnam War |
| Dewey: 959.7 |
| Series: Hill and Wang Critical Issues |
| Physical Information: 0.5" H x 5.4" W x 8.4" (0.40 lbs) 160 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Southeast Asian - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics. Using newly available documents from both American and Vietnamese archives, Hunt reinterprets the values, choices, misconceptions, and miscalculations that shaped the long process of American intervention in Southeast Asia, and renders more comprehensible--if no less troubling--the tangled origins of the war. |
Contributor Bio(s): Hunt, Michael H.: - Michael H. Hunt, Everett H. Emerson Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is a leading scholar of U.S. foreign relations and international history. His most recent books are The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance and A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives. |