Description
On the early morning of March 16, 1968, American soldiers from three platoons of Charlie Company (1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division), entered a group of hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam, located near the Demilitarized Zone and known as "Pinkville" because of the high level of Vietcong infiltration. The soldiers, many still teenagers who had been in the country for three months, were on a "search and destroy" mission. The Tet Offensive had occurred only weeks earlier and in the same area and had made them jittery; so had mounting losses from booby traps and a seemingly invisible enemy. Three hours after the GIs entered the hamlets, more than five hundred unarmed villagers lay dead, killed in cold blood. The atrocity took its name from one of the hamlets, known by the Americans as My Lai 4. Military authorities attempted to suppress the news of My Lai, until some who had been there, in particular a helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson and a door gunner named Lawrence Colburn, spoke up about what they had seen. The official line was that the villagers had been killed by artillery and gunship fire rather than by small arms. That line soon began to fray. Lieutenant William Calley, one of the platoon leaders, admitted to shooting the villagers but insisted that he had acted upon orders. An expose of the massacre and cover-up by journalist Seymour Hersh, followed by graphic photographs, incited international outrage, and Congressional and U.S. Army inquiries began. Calley and nearly thirty other officers were charged with war crimes, though Calley alone was convicted and would serve three and a half years under house arrest before being paroled in 1974. My Lai polarized American sentiment. Many saw Calley as a scapegoat, the victim of a doomed strategy in an unwinnable war. Others saw a war criminal. President Nixon was poised to offer a presidential pardon. The atrocity intensified opposition to the war, devastating any pretense of American moral superiority. Its effect on military morale and policy was profound and enduring. The Army implemented reforms and began enforcing adherence to the Hague and Geneva conventions. Before launching an offensive during Desert Storm in 1991, one general warned his brigade commanders, "No My Lais in this division--do you hear me?" Compelling, comprehensive, and haunting, based on both exhaustive archival research and extensive interviews, Howard Jones's My Lai will stand as the definitive book on one of the most devastating events in American military history.
About the Author
Howard Jones is University Research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama, where he taught for thirty-nine years. He is a New York Times-bestselling author of Mutiny on the Amistad (the basis for Steven Spielberg's film Amistad), as well as The Bay of Pigs, Death of a Generation, and To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. He lives with his wife, Mary Ann, in Northport, Alabama.
Reviews
This book about the famous massacre of Vietnamese villagers by American soldiers may be difficult to read - but it is essential for understanding our recent history, and should become the standard reference on the subject." -The New York Times
Empirically, Jones has succeeded in including the perspective of Vietnamese victims and Viet Cong commanders -- a focus that the existing historiography lacks. * Marcel Berni, Journal of Contemporary History *
Jones is a versatile historian . . . and here, he successfully accomplishes two tasks: first, he provides as comprehensive a history of My Lai as we are likely to see for some time. Second, he thoughtfully probes the myriad ways that the My Lai story has been told. Jones succeeds on all counts." -Kirkus, Starred Review
Nearly 10 years in the making, this exhaustively researched and well-written narrative bores in on the details of what has become known as the My Lai Massacre. . . . Jones, professor emeritus of history at the University of Alabama, mined an array of sources, including some original oral histories and interviews with Americans and Vietnamese, in producing this authoritative account of a dark moment in American history. * Publishers Weekly *
This important work deserves a wide audience and is essential for anyone interested in the Vietnam War." -LIBRARY JOURNAL
Jones' volume is a meticulous and detailed review of what happened in My Lai, the subsequent investigations and the courts-martial. His analysis is brutally frank yet fair, objective and balanced . . . Every graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, ROTC and OCS should be required to read this book before pinning on the gold bars." -Brigadier General David T. Zabecki, for HistoryNet
Howard Jones has produced the definitive work on My Lai. Beautifully written, balanced, and thorough, it makes full use of all the diverse sources previously unavailable to those who have written about My Lai, including those directly involved in its aftermath. Henceforth this significant work will be the go-to book on and authoritative reference to this American tragedy. * William G. Eckhardt, Col. (Ret.) JAGC, Chief Prosecutor My Lai Ground Action, Teaching Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law *
The best book by far on the My Lai massacre and its aftermath * exhaustively researched, persuasively argued, and a page-turner to boot. A must-read for anyone interested not only in the Vietnam era, but also in how things can go terribly wrong in the midst of armed conflict, the laws of war notwithstanding. Truly exceptional!Ralph B. Levering, author of The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History *
Nearly 10 years in the making, this exhaustively researched and well-written narrative bores in on the details of what has become known as the My Lai Massacre. . . . Jones, professor emeritus of history at the University of Alabama, mined an array of sources, including some original oral histories and interviews with Americans and Vietnamese, in producing this authoritative account of a dark moment in American history. * Publishers Weekly *
[A]n exhaustively researched and well-written narrative and analysis of the My Lai Massacre....[Jones] has produced a thorough and, as he says, 'balanced and accurate' analysis of the massacre itself, along with the event's controversial and convoluted legal and political aftermath. * Vietnam Veterans of America *
A powerful and discerning account of one of the darkest days in American military history. Judicious and unsparing, My Lai chronicles anew the 'Descent into Darkness,' and considers how we should think about the massacre today, half a century later. * Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam *
Howard Jones' My Lai is one of the most important books of the past decade on the Vietnam War. He has masterfully peeled away the complexity of the My Lai massacre and its cover-up to reveal more clearly than ever the dark horror, willful deceit, moral incompetence of this mass killing and its aftermath. Thanks to Jones, we now have a deeper understanding of My Lai and Vietnam. * William Thomas Allison, Georgia Southern University, author of My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War *
A searing investigation of a war crime so savage it could not be ignored or excused, and whose aftermath still courses through the veins of America's conscience, Howard Jones' My Lai now takes its place among the indispensable studies of modern American military history and the laws of war. * Roger Spiller, George C. Marshall Professor of Military History, emeritus, US Army Command and General Staff College *
Howard Jones has written a powerful account of America's darkest hour in the Vietnam War. The victims' pain, the soldiers' guilt, and their leaders' culpability are all laid out for us to read in this gripping history. For anyone who wants to understand the tragedy of that war, this is essential reading. * Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Dorothy Borg Professor in the History of the United States and East Asia, Columbia University *
Jones's book on My Lai is a great addition to the canon on the infamous massacre that came to portray the darkest side of American involvement in Vietnam. This book works as a note to our present and future leaders to think twice before going to war as atrocities will happen. For the everyday reader, it reminds us about the violent potential of ordinary human beings in the context of war. * Olli Siitonen, H-War *
Book Information
ISBN 9780190056704
Author Howard Jones
Format Paperback
Page Count 504
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 646g
Dimensions(mm) 225mm * 146mm * 33mm
About the Author
Howard Jones is University Research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama, where he taught for thirty-nine years. He is a New York Times-bestselling author of Mutiny on the Amistad (the basis for Steven Spielberg's film Amistad), as well as The Bay of Pigs, Death of a Generation, and To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. He lives with his wife, Mary Ann, in Northport, Alabama.
Reviews
This book about the famous massacre of Vietnamese villagers by American soldiers may be difficult to read - but it is essential for understanding our recent history, and should become the standard reference on the subject." -The New York Times
Empirically, Jones has succeeded in including the perspective of Vietnamese victims and Viet Cong commanders -- a focus that the existing historiography lacks. * Marcel Berni, Journal of Contemporary History *
Jones is a versatile historian . . . and here, he successfully accomplishes two tasks: first, he provides as comprehensive a history of My Lai as we are likely to see for some time. Second, he thoughtfully probes the myriad ways that the My Lai story has been told. Jones succeeds on all counts." -Kirkus, Starred Review
Nearly 10 years in the making, this exhaustively researched and well-written narrative bores in on the details of what has become known as the My Lai Massacre. . . . Jones, professor emeritus of history at the University of Alabama, mined an array of sources, including some original oral histories and interviews with Americans and Vietnamese, in producing this authoritative account of a dark moment in American history. * Publishers Weekly *
This important work deserves a wide audience and is essential for anyone interested in the Vietnam War." -LIBRARY JOURNAL
Jones' volume is a meticulous and detailed review of what happened in My Lai, the subsequent investigations and the courts-martial. His analysis is brutally frank yet fair, objective and balanced . . . Every graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, ROTC and OCS should be required to read this book before pinning on the gold bars." -Brigadier General David T. Zabecki, for HistoryNet
Howard Jones has produced the definitive work on My Lai. Beautifully written, balanced, and thorough, it makes full use of all the diverse sources previously unavailable to those who have written about My Lai, including those directly involved in its aftermath. Henceforth this significant work will be the go-to book on and authoritative reference to this American tragedy. * William G. Eckhardt, Col. (Ret.) JAGC, Chief Prosecutor My Lai Ground Action, Teaching Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law *
The best book by far on the My Lai massacre and its aftermath * exhaustively researched, persuasively argued, and a page-turner to boot. A must-read for anyone interested not only in the Vietnam era, but also in how things can go terribly wrong in the midst of armed conflict, the laws of war notwithstanding. Truly exceptional!Ralph B. Levering, author of The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History *
Nearly 10 years in the making, this exhaustively researched and well-written narrative bores in on the details of what has become known as the My Lai Massacre. . . . Jones, professor emeritus of history at the University of Alabama, mined an array of sources, including some original oral histories and interviews with Americans and Vietnamese, in producing this authoritative account of a dark moment in American history. * Publishers Weekly *
[A]n exhaustively researched and well-written narrative and analysis of the My Lai Massacre....[Jones] has produced a thorough and, as he says, 'balanced and accurate' analysis of the massacre itself, along with the event's controversial and convoluted legal and political aftermath. * Vietnam Veterans of America *
A powerful and discerning account of one of the darkest days in American military history. Judicious and unsparing, My Lai chronicles anew the 'Descent into Darkness,' and considers how we should think about the massacre today, half a century later. * Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam *
Howard Jones' My Lai is one of the most important books of the past decade on the Vietnam War. He has masterfully peeled away the complexity of the My Lai massacre and its cover-up to reveal more clearly than ever the dark horror, willful deceit, moral incompetence of this mass killing and its aftermath. Thanks to Jones, we now have a deeper understanding of My Lai and Vietnam. * William Thomas Allison, Georgia Southern University, author of My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War *
A searing investigation of a war crime so savage it could not be ignored or excused, and whose aftermath still courses through the veins of America's conscience, Howard Jones' My Lai now takes its place among the indispensable studies of modern American military history and the laws of war. * Roger Spiller, George C. Marshall Professor of Military History, emeritus, US Army Command and General Staff College *
Howard Jones has written a powerful account of America's darkest hour in the Vietnam War. The victims' pain, the soldiers' guilt, and their leaders' culpability are all laid out for us to read in this gripping history. For anyone who wants to understand the tragedy of that war, this is essential reading. * Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Dorothy Borg Professor in the History of the United States and East Asia, Columbia University *
Jones's book on My Lai is a great addition to the canon on the infamous massacre that came to portray the darkest side of American involvement in Vietnam. This book works as a note to our present and future leaders to think twice before going to war as atrocities will happen. For the everyday reader, it reminds us about the violent potential of ordinary human beings in the context of war. * Olli Siitonen, H-War *
Book Information
ISBN 9780190056704
Author Howard Jones
Format Paperback
Page Count 504
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 646g
Dimensions(mm) 225mm * 146mm * 33mm
