The American War: Vietnam, 1960-1975

Second edition, A People's History of the Vietnam War, 2003, ISBN 1565848071. Paperback, New York, 2005. Translated: Spanish, 2003; German, 2004; Korean, 2004; Turkish; Greek, 2005. An original history of the Vietnam War and an innovative work in creative nonfiction. The intellectual advance can be assessed from the wide translation and publication, and from the fact that the book is widely available in Vietnam. This is "people's history". The war is seen from the point of view of Vietnamese guerillas, American enlisted personnel and protestors in America. There is a constant emphasis on class conflict between American military personnel, back home in America, between landlords and peasants in Vietnam, but also between Vietnamese guerrillas and the Communist leaders. This is unique in histories of the war, and is the most significant and original aspect of the book. The rigour lies in the cohesion of the intellectual argument, and in the way that personal memoirs, professional histories, Vietnamese novels, and anthropological ethnographies are woven together so that a series of stories create a continuous narrative. This is history facing toward the public. It synthesizes a large body of specialist knowledge and brings it to a wider audience without losing complexity.