The Vietnam War

by John C. McManus

The war in Vietnam was initially a localized civil conflict—a bloody and brutal contest for state control between the communist government in the north and a Western-backed republican government in the south. But the war quickly became a global event. American involvement in the skies and on the ground sowed deep discontent and discord back home. Bombing campaigns spilled into neighboring Laos and Cambodia. Defense systems and new tech flowed to North Vietnam from major communist powers like China and the USSR. And a broad swath of ordinary people both inside of and beyond Vietnam—private citizens, army grunts, peace activists—were profoundly impacted by the fighting there.

In The Vietnam War, you will learn about the causes and consequences of the war in Vietnam. You will explore the scope of American intervention from air campaigns to large-scale military operations on the ground. You will survey the history of Vietnam from colonial Indochina onward, getting to know the homegrown ideas, personalities, and politics that would come to shape the conflict. You will reconstruct major military operations like the Tet Offensive and Rolling Thunder. You will examine the strategies used by US, South Vietnamese, and VC troops and determine their effectiveness in both the short and long term. And you will head to America to investigate the domestic politics of war, alongside the rise of a powerful anti-war movement that would come to define the decade.

That’s not all. Dive into the human dimensions of war, unearthing the experiences of everyday people bound up in and touched by the conflict in Vietnam. Explore the everyday life of a US combat soldier living and warring in Vietnam. Construct a portrait of your everyday VC soldier, from his socioeconomic background to the kinds of food he ate along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And follow veterans as they resettle back into American society, despite maltreatment and personal trauma. The Vietnam War is not just a history lesson on one singular event; you will engage in an exploration of war itself and the kind of impact it can have on ordinary hearts, minds, and spirits.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military History, War, Audiobook

12 pages, Audible Audio

Published November 4, 2022

About the author

John C. McManus is an author, military historian and award-winning professor of military history at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He is one of America’s leading experts on the history of modern American soldiers in combat.

Reviews

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The reality is that wars are never solely military questions."

[Jason Friedlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. On paper it presents multiple sides of the conflict, but its main sympathies are primarily with the American veterans. It’s understandable of sorts given its likely target audience, but it feels off for a history of what is often understood as a civil war amongst different sections across Vietnam, for it to focus so much on humanizing the foreign actors instead of the many local ones. And when they do get into Vietnamese stories, such as those of the South Vietnamese (who were allied with the U.S.), the descriptions of their suffering are often framed in the context of how much help they received from Americans such as from soldiers and medics or how grateful they were for being able to later migrate to the “greatest country on Earth.” Those of the North don’t get similar expressions of sympathy. In a chapter, a line or two will mention in passing how some of North Vietnamese women were found to have been brutally raped in a certain village, but then when it’s time to describe how Americans suffered, the descriptions would go on and on in great detail, occupying whole chapters.

It’s not a bad or inaccurate lecture series on the war, but it’s very imbalanced. The fact that it opens up calling the Northern soldiers the “Viet Cong” or “VC” (an epithet, they never called themselves that) and continues to do so through the whole series, exposes its biases upfront.

[JR Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a gap in my knowledge of the Vietnam War, so I watched these lectures on Wondrium. As far as I can tell, Dr. McManus does a great job giving an unbiased overview of the war, including a through survey of the colonial history of Vietnam before the war. He quotes sources from all sides–American hawks, doves, politicians, soldiers, and then quotes from North and South Vietnamese soldiers.

In addition to giving a more straightforward chronological history of the war, he digresses at times to go deeper into specific issues like the daily life of an American and Viet Cong Soldier.

Highly recommended. Get the video series if you can, the visuals add something to the presentation above an audio version.

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Vietnam War by John McManus is a great survey course that walks us through the initial phases of the rise of Vietnamese nationalist movements around WW2 right up to the reunification of Vietnam by force. McManus exposes the listener to a wide range of topics, stepping away from the political and military movements of leaders to focus on the personal and social aspects of the war around the midway point, only to return later on. McManus dispels several popular myths about the war, and engages with controversies that so often dominate the narrative of the conflict. As time moves on and partisan tensions surrounding the war ease, I imagine accounts like McManus' represent a new standard way to talk about the conflict.

[Monte Hickingbottom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent explanation of the Vietnam War! Heartbreakingly frustrating! I believe that American History usually focuses on the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World Wars, glossing over Korea and Vietnam. This has filled in some holes in my understanding. I highly recommend it! McManus was an incredible lecturer.

[Sanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This course was very thorough and thoughtful. It did a good job in covering a complex and little understood part of American history (& part of world history).
John C McManus was an incredible lecturer.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a child of this war, I continue to learn as much about it as possible. I still can't understand how these men were treated upon returning home, when most went not of their own volition but because of the draft. It's well worth the read.

[Philip Healey · Rating 5 out of 5]

For an Englishman who knew nothing of the Vietnam war this was a very helpful introduction.

It does lean more to the US sources, which given the IS author makes sense. There is still a decent use of Vietnamese sources and the Vietnamese governments policy, army and policy is still covered.

[Linus · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read on the Vietnam War, with a clear overview of its roots and causes, as well as on how events tragically unfolded, but it also covers the aftermath. Highly recommended to anyone interested in modern history.

[John Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent full review of the Vietnam War from first nationalist movement to modern Vietnam.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pre-read for Vietnam trip.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good, I liked the Ken Burns documentary better

[Rolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent introduction in terms of comprehensively covering the content it does, though this is very much written from a US-centric perspective.

[Georgiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but definitely slanted, particularly in favour of the South Vietnamese governments and military, who come off far better than in anything else I've read. The author also glasses over problematic behaviour by the US military - he acknowledges major atrocities like My Lai, but fails to reckon with far more common practices and the military culture that at best ignored and at worst encouraged them.

TL:DR - Don't let this be your only source on the Vietnam War.