A time for war : the United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 /

From OSS intrigues through the ignominious evacuation of Saigon, Schulzinger narrates the complicated saga of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. On a subject plagued with categorical judgments, Schulzinger stands forth as an informed and objective analyst. He shows that at every point where the choice was between sending more aid and letting the South fend for itself, American leaders sent more aid; they held that the fallout of the South going Communist was unbearable in the cold war context. The consequence of incrementalism was that the Americans, Schulzinger argues, were pressed by time, hoping for a decisive result after one more infusion of money and arms. The Communist forces were infinitely patient--and willing to accept gigantic casualties. This book's strongest impact might be on those with no personal memory of the war, to whom the conflict might appear as one undifferentiated mistake. The mistake was rather a cumulative one, which this historian ably breaks into its tragic parts. Gilbert Taylor

Schulzinger, a history professor at the University of Colorado, is trying to cover well-trod ground in a new way. He is competing against hundreds of books about the military, political, economic and social aspects of the Vietnam War, some of which are narrowly focused on just one aspect or on one policymaker; most of which view the war from the U.S. perspective only. Schulzinger, in about 400 pages, attempts to examine all the aspects, the psychologies of numerous policy-makers, and the perspectives of several nations. For readers who desire a relatively brief overview of all that and have not previously cracked a history of the Vietnam War, Schulzinger's book will be a wise choice. But his attempt at comprehensiveness in one manageable volume may make the book unattractive to readers already familiar with some aspects of how the war was conducted. That is because each chapter suffers from the kind of superficiality that often accompanies popularization. Schulzinger says he has incorporated the most recently available unpublished material from repositories in European nations, Canada and the United States. That may be true, but it is difficult to tell from his text or from his endnotes what is indeed new. Most of the sourcing, while solid, is not fresh, and in any case, the preponderance of the interpretations and conclusions are based on secondary sources. Schulzinger is working on a second volume, starting with the mid-1970s, intended to explain the war's contemporary legacies in Vietnam and the United States. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Schulzinger (Henry Kissinger, Columbia Univ., 1989) has provided the most authoritative, scholarly, exhaustive survey of the political, social, and military aspects of the Vietnam War since William Prochnau's One Upon a Distant War (LJ 11/15/95). While he views the war as a whole, his work will prove most useful for his reporting on the protracted debate within the U.S. political establishment concerning the war. The structure is the usual survey approach, beginning with the early stages of Vietnamese resistance against the French and proceeding with the inevitable U.S. intervention. An exceptional study that should be the benchmark for further surveys; for strong Vietnam War collections.‘John R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A sober, objective, detailed recounting and analysis of the American war in Vietnam, told almost exclusively from the American perspective. Schulzinger (History/Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) offers no new theory on why the US fought in Vietnam nor why this country came out on the losing end. But he has a different objective: offering a ``compendium of the current state of scholarship on the Vietnam War.'' Leaning heavily on State Department cables, White House memoranda, and other primary sources, Schulzinger offers a strongly researched, cleanly written, chronological look at Vietnam and an analysis of why the war effort failed. In the main, he agrees with the assessment of former secretary of state Dean Rusk, who believed that the Vietnamese communists prevailed because American policymakers underestimated the will of the North Vietnamese and overestimated the patience of the American people. Schulzinger also believes that, given the tenacity of the enemy and the severe political and military shortcomings of our South Vietnamese ally, the war was unwinnable for America. Schulzinger asks rhetorically what the US could have done to win, given the realities of the time. The answer: ``Nothing.'' Among the book's many strong points is Schulzinger's dispassionate analysis of the antiwar movement, in which he addresses the still hotly debated question of whether the protests helped end the war or prolonged it by comforting the enemy. The antiwar movement ``did not end the war in Vietnam, but it did alter, almost irrevocably, the perceptions of ordinary citizens of their society and their government; it also altered the perceptions of leaders toward the public.'' The first of a projected two-volume set; volume II will cover the Vietnam War's political, economic, social, and cultural legacies. (illustrations, not seen)