Session 1: Why Was There Conflict in Vietnam?
Assigned Reading:
Neil L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, chapters 1-2
Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: An International History in Documents, chapter 1
Optional Reading:
Mark Philip Bradley, Vietnam at War (2012)
William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (1996)
William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (2000)
Duong Van Mai Elliott, Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (2000)
Tran Tu Binh, The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation (1985)
Truong Buu Lam, Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931 (2000)
Session 2: Why Did Vietnam Matter to the United States?
Assigned Reading:
George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, chapters 1-2
Lawrence, The Vietnam War, chapters 2-4
Optional Reading:
Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer, The Ugly American (1958)
Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia (2005)
Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (1999)
Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (2014)
Andrew J. Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia (1989)
Kathryn Statler, Replacing France
Session 3: Why Did the United States Falter in Vietnam?
Assigned Reading:
Herring, America’s Longest War, chapters 3-5
Lawrence, The Vietnam War, chapters 4-6
Optional Reading:
Christian G. Appy, Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (2003)
Phillip Caputo, A Rumor of War (1983)
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)
Andrew F. Krepinovich Jr.’s The Army in Vietnam (1988)
David Maraniss, They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace in Vietnam and America (2004)
Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1996)
Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (1972)
Al Santoli, Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War (1985)
Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (1985)
Karen Gottschang Turner, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam (1999)
Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars (2000)
Session 4: How Did the War in Vietnam End?
Assigned Reading:
Herring, America’s Longest War, chapters 6-7
Lawrence, The Vietnam War, chapters 7-9
Optional Reading:
Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Kissinger, Nixon, and Betrayal in Vietnam (2001)
Mark Bowden, Hue, 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam (2017)
Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (1998)
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (2012)
Thomas Schwartz, Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (2020)
Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (2007)
Session 5: What Are the Lessons of the Lost War?
Assigned Reading:
Herring, America’s Longest War, chapter 8
Lawrence, The Vietnam War, chapter 10
Optional Reading:
Christian G. Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (2016)
Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Geenration, 2d ed. (2007)
Gary R. Hess, Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War (2008)
Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb, Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama (2011)
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (1990)
Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for Peace: The Legacy of the Vietnam War (2006)