Making sense of the wars for Vietnam has had a long history. The question why Vietnam? dominated American and Vietnamese political life for much of length of the Vietnam wars and has continued to be asked in the three decades since they ended. The essays in this inaugural volume of the National History Centres book series Reinterpreting History examine the conceptual and methodological shifts that mark the contested terrain of Vietnam war scholarship. They range from top-down reconsiderations of critical decision-making moments in Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon to microhistories of the war that explore its meanings from the bottom up. Some draw on recently available Vietnamese-language archival materials. Others mine new primary sources in the United States or from France, Great Britain, the former Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. Collectively, these essays map the interpretative histories of the Vietnam wars: past, present, and future. They also raise questions about larger meanings and the ongoing relevance of the wars for Vietnam in American, Vietnamese, and international histories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

About the Author
Mark Philip Bradley is Associate Professor of History, University of Chicago. Marilyn B. Young is Professor of History, New York University.

Reviews
Many of the 11 articles in Making Sense present wide-ranging examples of new and less conventional approaches to examining the war, with a particular focus on Vietnamese and international perspectives.... Essential. * K. Blaser, CHOICE *
This is a path-breaking, exceptionally well-researched book by both distinguished scholars who link and reinterpret the entire 1940s to 1970s series of conflicts, and leading scholars who have explored new archival sources for the first time--not least in Vietnam itself--to provide fresh, significant, and revealing insights into key aspects of a many-layered, and ever-haunting, war. * Walter LaFeber, author of America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006 *
Examining the topic from local, national, and international perspectives, this important volume provides a superb introduction to the most recent scholarship on the Vietnam War. * George Herring, author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 *
The cutting-edge research in this volume constitutes a crucial addition to the library of anyone interested in the histories of the Vietnam Wars. * Patrick Hagopian, The Journal of American History *
There is little doubt that Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars will influence how future students of the war move forward in their efforts to understand the conflict. * James McAllister, History: Reviews of New Books *



Book Information
ISBN 9780195315141
Author Mark Philip Bradley
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 155mm * 226mm * 18mm