Description:
The Vietnam War ripped America apart and charted the nation's tumultuous future. In their tens of thousands, young men went off to fight in what was an initially popular war only to face defeat and acrimony as national resolve wavered - and returned home to a nation that reviled them and tried to forget about them. Written by Andrew Wiest, the bestselling author of The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam this book traces the American experience of Vietnam from the war's popular inception to its morale-crushing and bitter conclusion.
Based on rich collection housed at the Center of Military History and at the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech, Vietnam allows the reader a grunt's-eye view of the conflict - from the steaming rice paddies and swamps of the Mekong Delta, to the triple-canopy rainforest of the Central Highlands, and to the forlorn Marine bases that dotted the DMZ. The stories contained within these pages detail everything from heroism and battle to helicopters hitting the landing zones and death and injury. In their own words, this is a true and grippingly accurate portrait of the American war in Vietnam through the eyes of the men and women who fought in that far away land, and those they left behind.Brief description:
Dr Andrew Wiest is University Distinguished Professor of History and the founding director of the Dale Center for the Study of War & History at the University of Southern Mississippi. Specializing in the study of World War I and Vietnam, he has served as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Warfighting Strategy in the United States Air Force Air War College. Since 1992 Dr Wiest has been active in international education, developing the award-winning Vietnam Study Abroad Program.
Wiest's titles include Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York University), which won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award, Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land (Osprey), and The Boys of '67 (Osprey), which was the basis for the Emmy nominated National Geographic Channel Documentary Brothers in War. He lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with his wife Jill and their three children Abigail, Luke, and Wyatt.Review Quotes:
"Wiest has put together a creditable oral history of soldiers and Marines who saw combat in the Vietnam War." --Veteran Magazine
"Wiest has a good feel for the human side of the Vietnam War...[he] asserts that there 'was no single, generic military experience for infantrymen and Marines in Vietnam, ' but he still provides a good sampling of what the war was like for American men fighting at the ground level." --Publishers Weekly "Unlike many books about the Vietnam War, Vietnam: A View from the Frontlines doesn't attempt to explain why the United States failed in Vietnam. Instead it aims to give the reader a grunt's-eye view of what happened on the battlefields of that tiny, Third World nation a generation ago." --Failure Magazine "From the testimony of combat veterans and their families, a military historian assembles a unique oral history of America's most controversial war...A smartly composed, affecting memory album of the draftees and volunteers whose service and sacrifice for so long went unacknowledged." --Kirkus Reviews "...powerful and revealing." --The Midwest Book Review