Swift Sword is a powerful true account of the Marines of Mike Company, who faced overwhelming odds in a brutal Vietnam War firefight. Based on 50 interviews with veterans and families, this award-winning book brings to life the courage, sacrifice, and brotherhood of those who fought for survival on a lone knoll in the Que Son Valley. It's a vivid narrative that honors the memories of those who served and those who never returned, offering readers an immersive experience of the terror and valor of personal combat in Vietnam.

Remarkable... the best overview of America's misadventure in Southeast Asia, and it is sure to become the standard one-volume book on the war. - Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times

The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosion of US influence around the world. Long after the last helicopter evacuated Saigon, Americans have continued to battle over whether it was ever a winnable war.

Based on thousands of pages of military, diplomatic, and intelligence documents, Geoffrey Wawro's The Vietnam War offers a definitive account of a war of choice that was doomed from its inception. In devastating detail, Wawro narrates campaigns where US troops struggled even to find the enemy in the South Vietnamese wilderness, let alone kill sufficient numbers to turn the tide in their favor. Yet the war dragged on, prolonged by presidents and military leaders who feared the political consequences of accepting defeat. In the end, no number of young lives lost or bombs dropped could prevent America's ally, the corrupt South Vietnamese regime, from collapsing the moment US troops retreated.

Broad, definitive, and illuminating, The Vietnam War offers an unsettling, resonant story of the limitations of American power.

This is the incredible tale of the youngest and lowest-ranking American POW captured in North Vietnam. Doug Hegdahl convinced his captors he was stupid, then spent the next two years memorizing the names of 254 fellow prisoners and other details of POW life. Upon his release, that information helped improve POW life for those still in captivity.

On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, political fires that had been burning across America during the 1960s exploded. Antiwar protesters wearing bell-bottom jeans and long hair hurled taunts and rocks at another group of young Americans--National Guardsmen sporting gas masks and rifles. At half past noon, violence unfolded with chaotic speed, as guardsmen--many of whom had joined the Guard to escape the draft--opened fire on the students. Two reductive narratives ensued: one, that lethal state violence targeted Americans who spoke their minds; the other, that law enforcement gave troublemakers the comeuppance they deserved. For over fifty years, little middle ground has been found due to incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence.

Kent State meticulously re-creates the divided cultural landscape of America during the Vietnam War and heightened popular anxieties around the country. On college campuses, teach-ins, sit-down strikes, and demonstrations exposed the growing rift between the left and the right. Many students opposed the war as unnecessary and unjust and were uneasy over poor and working-class kids drafted and sent to Vietnam in their place. Some developed a hatred for the military, the police, and everything associated with authority, while others resolved to uphold law and order at any cost.

Focusing on the thirteen victims of the Kent State shooting and a painstaking reconstruction of the days surrounding it, historian Brian VanDeMark draws on crucial new research and interviews--including, for the first time, the perspective of guardsmen who were there. The result is a complete reckoning with the tragedy that marked the end of the sixties.

In this book, I have sought to blend personal experience, journalism, and scholarship. It is history written by a journalist who was there.-Peter L. W. Osnos

LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail details how President Lyndon B. Johnson and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, made choices central to U.S. strategy in Vietnam, ending in defeat. The portrait emerges of men who knew that conventional victory was impossible but who could not or would not reverse the policies that they and the military pursued.

In their own words, especially McNamara's, how and why this happened is a story never before told with such immediacy and insight. The lessons for today's policymakers are clear-and could have avoided the outcomes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Discover untold insights of the critical Vietnam War decisions made by President Johnson and Robert McNamara, their struggles with policy reversals, and the lessons relevant to today's conflicts. Also featuring a unique audio bonus with exclusive, candid audio from McNamara's memoir creation.

A slim volume with a knife's edge, even a half century later. . . . [I]n LBJ and McNamara, Osnos nails it.-Washington Monthly

Utilizing his unprecedented access to the record, Peter Osnos has excavated the complex relationship between Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert S. McNamara. Osnos expertly pulls back the curtain, revealing the central role that the character and personalities of these two complicated men played in the decision to escalate the war. We learn something new on almost every page.-Robert K. Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations, Vassar College, and author of Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail brings to one of history's most-well covered topics new insights and a deeper understanding of Johnson and McNamara than we have ever had. . . . The approaching fifty-year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam debacle offers the right moment to learn anew.-Daniel Weiss, Homewood Professor of the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University; president emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and author of In That Time: Michael O'Donnell and the Tragic Era of Vietnam

As a child, Robert Howard was taught by his Granny Callie to always face his threats head-on. Some thirty years later, he emerged from the Vietnam War as America's most decorated Green Beret.

For the first time, Robert Howard's story is being told in full. Respected military historian Stephen L. Moore takes readers into the heart of the Vietnam War's covert Special Ops jungle warfare in this immersive, suspenseful read. Through family sources, National Archives documents, and dozens of testimonials from the Green Berets who fought alongside him, this one-man army will finally be given the recognition he deserves.

Robert Howard grew up in poverty in a small town in Alabama, with a strong sense of faith and determination. When he enlisted in the army at age seventeen, his Granny Callie's words echoed in his head, and he pledged to follow them to the bitter end. In the most dire of combat experiences, Howard ran directly toward his opponents, sacrificing his body to protect others and to complete the mission above all else. Time and time again, he survived battles that should have claimed his life, suffering countless bullets, a spinal injury, and shrapnel and blast wounds. Recon commanders who ran missions with him declared him to be the bravest man they had ever met.

In return, Howard received a staggering number of awards and ribbons for valor and distinctive service in combat--over fifty in all, including the Medal of Honor, eight Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, and four Bronze Stars. He holds the distinction of being the only soldier nominated for the Medal of Honor three times in only a thirteen-month period. In total, Howard spent a grueling, treacherous forty months in combat duty in Vietnam, including over two years with MACV-SOG's elite covert group.

This revised and updated guide to the Vietnam War charts the unforgettable story of America's longest and most controversial conflict, 50 years on from its end.

Hundreds of insightful images and a compelling narrative combine to chronicle this catastrophic war. From 1955, the communist government of North Vietnam waged war against South Vietnam and its main ally, the USA. Over the course of two decades of hostility and warfare, the number of casualties reached an incomprehensible three million people.

Detailed descriptions of every episode, including Operation Passage to Freedom and the evacuation of the American embassy in Saigon, tell the stories in iconic photographs and eyewitness accounts. Discover the real people behind the conflict, with gripping biographies of key figures, including Henry Kissinger, General Thieu, President Nixon, and Pol Pot. This incredible visual record is supported by locator maps, at-a-glance timelines, archive photography, and key quotations to ensure an all-encompassing experience.

The Vietnam War is an essential historic reference to help humanity learn the lessons of suffering and sacrifice from one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century.

Each year, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps selects one book that he believes is both relevant and timeless for reading by all Marines. The Commandant's choice for 1993 was We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.
In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War.
How these men persevered--sacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave up--makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating. General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders. This devastating account rises above the specific ordeal it chronicles to present a picture of men facing the ultimate challenge, dealing with it in ways they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier. It reveals to us, as rarely before, man's most heroic and horrendous endeavor.

Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians

The American Empire Project
Winner of the Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few bad apples. But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to kill anything that moves.

Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called a My Lai a month. Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

In this memoir, Eric Newhall traces his life and political evolution with a particular focus on his time inside Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution, where he was incarcerated for refusing to participate in the Vietnam War. Beginning with his youth in an all-white neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, he describes his undergraduate experience at Occidental College in Los Angeles (1963-1967), his time in prison, and the powerful impact that his time behind bars had on both his 34-year marriage and 44-year teaching career.

His memoir is a reminder that much work remains to be done, that subtle racism takes many forms and can be found even in outwardly progressive families like the one in which he was raised, and that the social problems examined here are even more pressing today than they were during the 1960s. The book will be particularly compelling to readers concerned by the threat to democracy posed by persistent war, authoritarianism and racism.

The stories we're told about the Vietnam War tend to focus on the soldiers who fought it. But what about the ordinary people who lived through it? How did the war and its aftermath affect the course their lives would take? What risks would they have to take to build a new life?

12 Elephants and a Dragon isn't just another book on Vietnam War history. It's the story of one family's life after the war had ended. Vi Tu Banh, then still a child, and his family left their home country in a dangerously overcrowded and dilapidated boat, had to fend for themselves on Air Raya in Indonesia, and then made the journey from the Galang refugee camp to a new life in a house on a hilltop among the snowy fields outside Uxbridge, Ontario. They learned, one day at a time, how to build a new life in Canada.

Their story is one of struggle and strength, highlighting the profound effect that the kindness of others can have on a person's life. It speaks of gratitude and illustrates how each of us have the power to contribute to changing the world for the better.

This exceptional memoir reminds us that there are many nuances to the issue of emigration and immigration. After escaping Vietnam, Vi Tu's refugee family relied on charity and being sponsored by complete strangers to come to the safety of Canada. They then worked hard not only to survive, but on building a new life, and to help contribute and give back to the country that welcomed them:

Once they were Vietnamese boat people, but they became the new Canadians who have been helping to build the country that adopted them.

Today, Dr. Vi Tu Banh is an optometrist, providing comprehensive eye care to the residents of Uxbridge, Ontario and the surrounding areas, with a special interest in providing vision therapy to patients with concussion-like symptoms and visual-related learning problems. His work is a powerful piece of healing from trauma.

The true story of the young men who daily risked their lives on classified surveillance missions deep behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. We Dared to Fly is filled with riveting combat accounts and delivers a human-interest story, introducing a cast of fascinating characters and bringing the reader into their lives with many revealing personal anecdotes.

In Vietnam today, you will hold only the ground you stand upon.

Step into the depths of the deepest dark forest and see this war through my dad's eyes in this award-winning true story of his experience in Vietnam's deadly Central Highlands.

Twenty-year-old Will Bowe is living on his family's farm when he's drafted in 1965. He and his impossibly young friends will become skytroopers in the 1st Air Cavalry Division's new airmobile infantry. Flying into the jungle battlefield by helicopter, they soon learn what search and destroy means and face the reality of this new war.

Based on once-classified staff journals, situation reports, and military maps, we follow Alpha Company, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry as they march through rice fields, search villages, climb jungle-covered mountains, and endure many harrowing battles.

From the war zone, Will sends home many of the photographs and letters now featured in this book, often scribbled in haste before another mission, or by flashlight under a poncho in the rain. They will travel over eight thousand miles across the ocean to be placed in a mailbox that stands across from a farmhouse along a dusty county road in Wisconsin.

Many fellow soldiers are interviewed for this story, as are family members and friends of the fallen. Recalling the humor and friendship they shared, along with the sadness and tragedy of a tour of duty in Vietnam, their memories are now woven together, along with the letters, photos, and reports, to tell of one infantry company's war story: From their training at Fort Carson to their historic voyage across the sea, their first steps into the dark highland jungles, their many battles fought together, and eventually... their final patrol.

THIS GUT-WRENCHING FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF THE WAR IS A CLASSIC IN THE ANNALS OF VIETNAM LITERATURE.

Guns up was the battle cry that sent machine gunners racing forward with their M60s to mow down the enemy, hoping that this wasn't the day they would meet their deaths. Marine Johnnie Clark heard that the life expectancy of a machine gunner in Vietnam was seven to ten seconds after a firefight began. Johnnie was only eighteen when he got there, at the height of the bloody Tet Offensive at Hue, and he quickly realized the grim statistic held a chilling truth.

The Marines who fought and bled and died were ordinary men, many still teenagers, but the selfless bravery they showed day after day in a nightmarish jungle war made them true heroes. This new edition of Guns Up , filled with photographs and updated information about those harrowing battles, also contains the real names of these extraordinary warriors and details of their lives after the war. The book's continuing success is a tribute to the raw courage and sacrifice of the United States Marines.

The story of a Green Beret commander's heroism during the Vietnam War, and the long fight to recognize his bravery.

When Col. Paris Davis was selected to lead one of the Green Beret A-teams organizing resistance to Communist incursions into South Vietnam, his commanding officer warned him that some of his soldiers would resent his authority. This was no surprise; there were only a handful of Black officers in the Special Forces. Davis quickly won the respect of his soldiers, and would soon fight beside him as bullets snapped past and mortars exploded overhead.

On June 18th, Davis led a group of inexperienced locals and Special Forces soldiers in an attack on a Viet Cong base in Bong Son. They were met by a superior enemy force, and Davis led the charge in a grueling firefight. He was seriously wounded, but he disobeyed a direct order to retreat until he dragged three injured Green Berets off the battlefield to safety.

Every Weapon I Had is an inspiring tale of valor and sacrifice, set against the backdrop of major escalations in both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. It is also a story of deferred honor and delayed recognition; Davis earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions, but his nomination for the Congressional Medal of Honor was repeatedly lost. No official reason has ever been given for this oversight, but those who fought to correct it believe that it was motivated by racial prejudice. Davis was finally awarded the Medal in 2023, 58 years after the battle.

The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C.

- H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion)

Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning new analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on recently released transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. It also pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants.

Dereliction Of Duty covers the story in strong narrative fashion, focusing on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

Sure to generate controversy, Dereliction Of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.

Howard Carson grew up in a small Indiana town. It was 1968, and after graduating from high school he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He wasn't interested in college, not then. His job for the past year had been selling shoes. He had no skills to speak of, and he decided to go into the armed services. He became a Marine, and six months later was deployed to Vietnam.

This story's not about battle plans and strategies. How this battle was won and another lost. It's about feelings and emotions. It's about getting ready for war. The training, and the day-to-day experiences of a living hell. Friends shot or blown to pieces and being splattered with their blood. Carrying a wounded Marine to the helicopter while under heavy fire. Being on patrol during the monsoons. Leeches, tigers, mosquitoes, and snakes. Booby traps and guerilla warfare. A relentless and determined enemy. What Howard and others had to do, and how they dealt with the fear, the anger, and the pain.

It was the early 70's. Howard finished his military service and started college, where he was screamed at, spit on, pushed and hit for being in the military and serving his country. This story's about a different time and a different America. A different story of war.

An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War.

Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.

Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners' victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.

No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings' readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

100% of author royalties are being donated to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation

Helicopters loom large in how we picture the Vietnam War. Kilgore's birds coming in hot (and Wagnerian) out of the rising sun in Apocalypse Now. The infantry/helicopter assault at Ia Drang in the climax of We Were Soldiers. A chopper flying over green rice paddies, with a teenaged door gunner manning a .50-cal. A slick dropping into an LZ whirling with purple smoke. We can only imagine it. Tom Feigel lived it, as a twenty-year-old crew chief in a Huey. Super Slick is the story of his year in Vietnam.

Tom Feigel grew up a typical post-World War II kid who wrestled in high school, had a steady girl, and loved working on cars--and then everything changed. Less than a year out of high school, he was drafted into the army and assigned to aviation, ultimately to helicopters. In Vietnam in 1970, he first worked as a hangar rat, part of the ground crew responsible for maintaining the company's thirty Hueys--the Warriors and Thunderbirds--of the 336th Assault Helicopter Company, which operated in southern South Vietnam, in the Mekong Delta and U Minh Forest. In short order, Feigel volunteered for a flight mission to replace the rotors of a damaged chopper--which led to his becoming a crew chief on a transport slick called Warrior 21. Before long, he and 21's crew asked the company commander for permission to re-outfit their ship for thicker, more dangerous missions--and they ended up flying an up-gunned helicopter call sign Super Slick, tasked with similar missions but into more dangerous zones.

Feigel's memoir recounts the thick and thin of helicopter combat in Vietnam. Heart-pumping missions into hot landing zones (sometimes inserting and extracting Navy SEALs). Adrenaline-fueled flights into enemy-infested jungles and free-fire zones. Low-level reconnaissance. Hash and trash runs to deliver supplies to far-flung units. Terrifying nighttime operations where trees posed nearly as much danger as the enemy. Razor-thin margins between life and death. It was dangerous; it was thrilling. The crews loved it; the crews hated it. They were proud of it. And they never wanted to do it again. Super Slick is as close as you can get to being inside a Huey--to hearing the radio chatter, feeling the thrum of the rotors, the pounding of the door guns.

Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award
Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction
A New York Times Book Review The Year in Reading Selection

All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War--a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations.

[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War--and which Vietnamese call the American War...As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift--wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity--to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls 'a just memory' of this war.
--Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times

In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war...[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.
--Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review

Ultimately, Nguyen's lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.
--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)