The Vietnam War: A Rather Select & Idiosyncratic Bibliography

Patrick S. O’Donnell

Department of Philosophy

Santa Barbara City College (2012)

Apologia—

This bibliography (which begins on page 4), while far from exhaustive, should be broad and deep enough to help one arrive at a fairly sophisticated intellectual and emotional understanding of the Vietnam War and its myriad effects on American society, politics, and culture. I hope it also provides some sense—to put it all too feebly—of the devastating impact the war had, and continues to have, on the people and land of Vietnam. Over the years I’ve slowly but intimately come to appreciate the many ways the Vietnam War in particular and “the 60s” generally, have decisively shaped the contours of my worldview (and no doubt subconsciously, my lifeworld as well): hence my attraction to Buddhist spirituality and identification with Left politics and economics. (At least I’m in good company, the Dalai Lama having described himself in an interview as ‘half-Marxist, half-Buddhist’). Indeed, upon learning of this compilation (and in light of over thirty previous bibliographies), my wife expressed surprise that it took me so long to put this particular one together. I suppose it has something to do with a reluctance to fully confront in complete lucidity those mysterious forces we sense—presuming a capacity for episodic transcendence of self-deception and states of denial—have determined in large measure the notion of who we are with regard to our most cherished beliefs, values, and commitments.

‘You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren’t interested.’

‘They don’t want Communism.’

‘They want enough rice,’ I said. ‘They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want.’

‘If Indo-China goes…’

‘I know the record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does “go” mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I’d bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they’ll be growing paddy in these fields, they’ll be carrying their produce to market on long poles wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don’t like our smell, the smell of Europeans. And remember—from a buffalo’s point of view you are European too.’

‘They’ll be forced to believe what they are told, they won’t be allowed to think for themselves.’

‘Thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?’

‘You talk as if the whole country were peasant. What about the educated? Are they going to be happy?’

‘On no,’ I said, ‘we’ve brought them up in our ideas. We’ve taught them dangerous games, and that’s why we are waiting here, hoping we don’t get our throats cut. We deserve to have them cut. I wish your friend York was here too. I wonder how he’d relish it.’

—Fowler and Pyle in conversation from Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American.

“Like most tropical countries, Vietnam gets up with the light, and one of the greatest pleasures you can find is to go outside at six in the morning and see the whole town out stretching its limbs, playing badminton or soccer in the streets, ghosting its way through tai chi motions. And for all the bullet holes that scar the country, the foreigner has only to say he’s from America, and he is greeted with shiningly genuine smiles. [….] It is hard, in fact, not to grow woozily romantic when enumerating the holiday seductions of the land. There are mist-wreathed rain forests in the west and north, where you can find 53 distinct minority tribes—each with its own colorful costume, customs, and tongue—hunting, still, with bows and arrows. There are atmospheric old French villa, peeling behind coconut palms and green gates, made more nostalgic now by decay, and lined by lovely avenues of tamarind. There are illuminated lanterns and oil-lit lamps along the crooked streets at night, which take you back to the Indochina of your dreams, and the urbane pleasures of white-linen restaurants serving mandarin juice and coq au vin while serenading you piano and violin duets. There are 1,400 miles of coastline studded with deserted pure-white beaches, and there are prices that are extravagantly low…. Most of all, though, there are the exceptionally attractive, cultured, and hospitable people, who still light up at the sight of foreigners, and yet who are still self-possessed and full of a quick intelligence—for which they have long been famous.”

—Pico Iyer (in the introduction to the Smolan and Erwitt title below)

A General Retired

dedicated to Nguyen Chuong and the brothers of my division

Your days in the army are over.

Now you stay home in the village,

think of old friends,

the many who went and didn’t return.

Your wife grown old beside you. How many

years chewing betel nuts in afternoon rain?

So young when you parted, all the years of longing;

how much love can make amends?

The medals rest in the old chest,

what’s a general, a commander’s rank now?

Old fame and glory pointless;

life flows by like swift-running water.

Once a friend to guns and fighting,

now you while away the hours with neighbors.

Once you crossed thick-canopied mountains and forests,

now you wander a small garden path.

Your parents long dead,

you rebuild their graves.

On a quiet yard of earth, you watch

the incense rise like shimmering grass.

Rain and sun beat down on the small house

your children left.

Without the many neighbors,

your life would dissolve into loneliness.

Nights when the wind blows cold,

the old wounds come back.

Where is the division now?

Who’s still there; who’s lost?

Your power and rank surrendered,

who remembers you; who comes to visit?

Who forgets; who stays away?

You live alone with the moon and the sky…

—Nguyen Khoa Diem

From the volume, 6 Vietnamese Poets, edited by Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen (various translators) (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2002, in cooperation with the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences).

  • Barnet, Richard J. Roots of War: The Men and Institutions Behind U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Atheneum, 1972.
  • Berman, Larry. No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 2001.
  • Berrigan, Daniel. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004 (Beacon Press, 1970).
  • Bowen, Kevin, Nguyen Ba Chung, and Bruce Weigl, eds. Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1983. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.
  • Brigham, Robert K. Guerilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
  • Bui Tin (Do Van and Judy Stowe, tr.). Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.
  • Burns, Richard Dean, and Milton Leitenberg. The Wars in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, 1945-1982: A Bibliographic Guide. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1984.
  • Caputo, Philip. A Rumor of War. New York: Henry Holt and Co./Owl Books, 1996 ed.
  • Chanoff, David and Doan Van Toai, eds. ‘Vietnam’: A Portrait of Its People at War. London: I.B. Tauris, 1996.
  • Chomsky, Noam. American Power and the New Mandarins. New York: Pantheon, 1969.
  • Chomsky, Noam. At War with Asia: Essays on Indochina. New York: Pantheon, 1970.
  • Clodfelter, Mark. The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 1989.
  • DeBenedetti, Charles (with Charles Chatfield). An American Ideal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990.
  • Ehrhart, E.H. In the Shadow of Vietnam: Essays, 1977-1991. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1991.
  • Ellsberg, Daniel. Papers on the War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
  • Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking Penguin, 2002.
  • Falk, Richard A., Gabriel Kolko, and Robert Jay Lifton, eds. Crimes of War. New York: Random House, 2001.
  • FitzGerald, Frances. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1972.
  • Foner, Philip S. U.S. Labor and the Vietnam War. New York: International Publishers, 1989.
  • Goldstein, Gordon M. Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Co., 2008.
  • Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. New York: Penguin Books, 1977 (William Heinemann Ltd., 1955).
  • Herring, George C., ed. The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1983.
  • Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 4th ed., 2002.
  • Ho Chi Minh (Bernard B. Fall, ed.). Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66. New York: Praeger, 1967.
  • Hoang Van Chi. From Colonialism to Communism: A Case History of North Vietnam. New York: Allied Publishers, 1964.
  • Hoàng, Văn Thái. How South Vietnam Was Liberated: Memoirs. Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers, 1992.
  • Hunt, Andrew E. The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
  • Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: Penguin, 2nd revised ed., 1997.
  • Kimball, Jeffrey P. Nixon’s Vietnam War. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
  • Kimball, Jeffrey. The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-era Strategy. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
  • Kolko, Gabriel. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon, 1985.
  • Kutler, Stanley I. The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
  • Kutler, Stanley I., ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996.
  • Langguth, A.J. Our Vietnam/Nuoc Viet Ta: The War 1954–1975. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
  • Laurence, John. The Cat from Hué: A Vietnam War Story. New York: PublicAffairs, 2002.
  • Littauer, Raphael, and Norman Uphoff, eds. The Air War in Indochina. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972 revised ed.
  • Logevall, Fredrik. Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.
  • Logevall, Fredrik. Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam. New York: Random House, 2012.
  • McMaster, H.R. Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That led to Vietnam. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
  • Moïse, Edwin E. Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
  • Moïse, Edwin E. Historical Dictionary of the Vietnam War. Scarecrow Press, 2001.
  • Morgan, Ted. Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu…. New York: Random House, 2010.
  • Moser, Richard R. The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
  • Neilands, J.B., et al. Harvest of Death: Chemical Warfare in Vietnam and Cambodia. New York: The Free Press, 1972.
  • Nhāt Hanh, Thích. Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. New York: Hill & Wang, 1967.
  • Nicosia, Gerald. Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.
  • Ninh, Bao. The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996 (Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, 1993).
  • O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
  • Rudenstine, David. The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon Papers Case. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. On Genocide. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968.
  • Schalk, David L. War and the Ivory Tower: Algeria and Vietnam. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005 ed.
  • Schell, Jonathan. The Village of Ben Suc. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.
  • Schell, Jonathan. The Real War: The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War. New York: De Capo Press, 2000.
  • Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York: Random House, 1988.
  • Simpson, Howard R. Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books (formerly Brassey’s Inc.), 2005 (1996).
  • Small, Melvin. Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
  • Small, Melvin. Covering Dissent: The Media and the Anti-Vietnam war Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
  • Smolan, Rick, and Jennifer Erwitt, eds. Passage to Vietnam: Through the Eyes of Seventy Photographers. Sausalito, CA: Against All Odds Productions and Melcher Media, 1994.
  • Sontag, Susan. A Trip to Hanoi. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968.
  • Thies, Wallace J. When Governments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, 1964-1968. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980.
  • Valentine, Douglas. The Phoenix Program. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1990.
  • Varon, Jeremy. Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.
  • Wells, Tom. The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2005 (University of California Press, 1994).
  • Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
  • Zaroulis, Nancy, and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963-1975. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984.
  • Zinn, Howard. Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967.

On The Fire Suicides Of The Buddhists

By Charles Bukowski

They only burn themselves to reach Paradise
—Mne. Nhu
original courage is good,
motivation be damned,
and if you say they are trained
to feel no pain,
are they
guarenteed this?
is it still not possible
to die for somebody else?
you sophisticates
who lay back and
make statements of explanation,
I have seen the red rose burning
and this means more.

1