The Vietnam War: A Documentary Reader

Through a collection of carefully-selected primary documents, The Vietnam War provides a varied range of both American and Vietnamese perspectives and experiences of this critical international conflict. The text features documents that foster discussion on the continuing debates about the causes, consequences and morality of the US intervention. It also looks at the human side of the war, its impact on ordinary soldiers and civilians, and the deep and enduring fissures that the war created within US society.

A guided tour of primary documents from both countries, the text introduces each source with a brief background summary to help the reader situate it in the context of the period. The text draws on recent scholarship and Miller’s own expertise in Vietnamese history and Vietnamese archival sources to examine the motives and experiences of Vietnamese groups and individuals. The author includes several original translations of Vietnamese documents not previously available in English. Documents have been selected with the most important and exciting recent trends in scholarship in mind, and include personal histories from individuals involved.

Keywords: Vietnam, Viet Cong, conscientious objector, protest, 1960s, military history, draft, Gulf of Tonkin, Tet offensive, antiwar movement, 20th Century America