Books and Articles About the Vietnam War
This is by no means a complete list. This is the list we put together in 1992 when our book was published. Some of the best books on the war are included here but it is a just a starting point.
Resistance and Breakdown of the Military
Boyle, Richard. Flower of the Dragon: The Breakdown of the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Ramparts Press, 1972
Cortright, David. Soldiers in Revolt: The American Military Today. Garden City, New York: Doubleday (Anchor Press), 1975
Crowell, Joan. Fort Dix Stockade: Riot and Demonstration. New York: Links Books, 1974
Currey, Cecil B. Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army During the Vietnam Era. NewYork: W.W. Norton, 1981 (also published under name Cincinnatus in 1978)
Duncan, Donald. The New Legions. New York: RandomHouse, 1967
Ferber, Michael, and Staughton Lynd. The Resistance. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971
Finn, James. Protest. New York: Vintage Books, 1967
Gardner, Fred. The Unlawful Concert ‑ An Account of the Presidio Mutiny Case. Viking Press, 1970
Gioglio, Gerald R. Days of Decision: An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in the MIlitary During the Vietnam War. Trenton, N.J.: Broken Rifle Press, 1989
Haines, Harry William. The GI Underground Press: Two Cases Studies of Alternative Military Newspapers. MS Thesis, University of Utah, 1976
Halstead, Fred. GIs Speak Out Against the War: The Case of the Ft. Jackson 8. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970
Hayes, James Robert. The War Within A War: Dissent In The Military With an Emphasis Upon the Vietnam-Era. Ph.D. Thesis, The University of Connecticut, 1975
Hayes, Thomas Lee. American Deserters: The Men and Their Challenge in Sweden. New York: Association Press, 1971
Heath, G. Louis. Mutiny Does Not Happen Lightly: The Literature of the American Resistance to the Vietnam War. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976
Heinl, Col. Robert D., Jr. "The Collapse of the Armed Forces" Armed Forces Journal, June 7, 1971
Kerry, John, and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The New Soldier. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1971
Levy, M.D., Howard and David Miller. Going to Jail: The Political Prisoner. Grove Press
McGrady, Mike. A Dove in Vietnam. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968
Moser, Richard R. The GI and Veteran Resistance to the War in Vietnam: Background, Causes and Context. Thesis, Montclair State College, 1986
Radine, Lawrance B. The Taming of the Troops: Social Control in the U.S. Army. Greenwood Press, 1977
Rinaldi, Matthew. "The Olive-Drab Rebels: Military Organizing During the Vietnam Era" Radical America (1974)
Sherrill, Robert. Military Justice Is To Justice As Military Music Is to Music. New York: Harper & Row, 1970
Short, William and Willa Seidenberg. A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War. Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1992
Smith, George E. P.O.W.: Two Years With the Vietcong. Berkeley: Ramparts Press, 1971
Stapp, Andy. Up Against the Brass: The Fight to Unionize the US Army. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970
Stevens, Franklin. If This Be Treason. New York: Wyden, 1970
Taylor, Clyde (ed.). Vietnam and Black America: An Anthology of Protest and Resistance. Garden City, NY: Doubleday (Anchor), 1973
Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The Winter Soldier Investigation: An Inquiry into American War Crimes. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972
Waterhouse, Larry G. and Mariann G. Wizard. Turning the Guns Around ‑ Notes on the GI Movement. Praeger Publishers, 1971
Waters, Mary A. GIs and the Fight Against War. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971
Woodstone, Norma Sue. Up Against the War. New York: Tower Publications, 1973
Anti-War Movement/Anti-Draft
Baskir, Lawrence M. and William A. Strauss. Change and Circumstance: The Draft, The War and the Vietnam Generation. New York: Vintage Books, 1978
Hoffman, Paul. Moratorium: An American Protest. New York: Tower Publications, 1970
Kasinsky, Renee. Refugees from Militarism: Draft‑Age Americans in Canada. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980
Lynd, Staughton and Thomas Hayden. The Other Side. New York: New American Library, 1966
Zaroulis, Nancy and Gerald Sullivan. Who Spoke Up? New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984
Historical/Political/Cultural Analysis of the Viet Nam War
Bloodworth, Denis. An Eye for the Dragon. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970
Boettcher, Thomas D. Vietnam: The Valor and the Sorrow. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985
Capps, Walter, Ed. The Vietnam Reader. London: Routledge, 1991
Fall, Bernard. Street Without Joy: Insurgency in Indochina. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1961
. The Two Viet Nams: A Political and Military Analysis. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963
. Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1966
Fitzgerald, Frances. Fire In the Lake. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972
Gettleman, Marvin E., Jane Franklin, Marilyn Young and H. Bruce Franklin, eds. Vietnam And America. New York: Grove Press, 1985
Halberstam, David. The Making of a Quagmire. New York: Random House, 1964
Kahin, George McT. Intervention: How America became Involved in Vietnam. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986
Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: The Viking Press, 1983
Kolko, Gabriel. Anatomy of a War. New York: Pantheon, 1985
Lanning, Michael Lee and Dan Cragg. Inside the VC and the NVA. New York: Ivy Books, 1992
Pratt, John Clark. Vietnam Voices. New York: Penguin Books, 1984
Rowe, John Carlos and Rick Berg. The Vietnam War and American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991
Schell, Jonathan. The Real War: The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987
Sevy, Grace. The American Experience in Vietnam. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989
Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and American in Vietnam. New York: Random House, 1988
Stanton, Shelby L. The Rise and Fall of an American Army: U.S. Ground Forces in Vietnam, 1965-1973. Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1985
Werner, Jayne S. and Luu Doan Huynh, eds. The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1993
Williams, William Appleman, Thomas McCormick, Lloyd Gardner and Walter LaFeber, America in Vietnam. Anchor Books, 1985
Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1991
American Personal Narratives and Oral Histories
Baker, Mark. Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Soldiers Who Fought There. New York: William Morrow, 1981
Caputo, Philip. A Rumor of War. New York: Ballantine Books, 1977
Ehrhart, W.D. Marking Time. New York: Avon Books, 1986
Goff, Stanley and Sanders, Robert with Smith, Clark. Brothers: Black Soldiers in the Nam. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1982
Herr, Michael. Dispatches. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968
Ketwig, John. And A Hard Rain Fell: A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam. Macmillan Publishing Co., 1985
Kovic, Ron. Born on the Fourth of July. New York: McGraw‑Hill Book Co., 1976
Lane, Mark. Conversations With Americans. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970
Marshall, Kathryn. In The Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1987
Mason, Robert. Chickenhawk. New York: Viking, 1983
Santoli, Al. Everything We Had: An Oral History of The Vietnam War by Thirty-three American Soldiers Who Fought It. New York: Ballantine Books, 1981
___________. To Bear Any Burden: The Vietnam War and Its Aftermath In the Words of Americans and Southeast Asians. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1985
Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans. New York: Random House, 1984
Van Devanter, Lynda, with Christopher Morgan. Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam. New York: Beaufort Books, Inc., 1983
Walker, Keith, ed. A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty-Six American Women Who Served in Vietnam. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1985
Willenson, Kim. The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War. New York: A Newsweek Book, 1987
American Soldiers/Veterans
Brende, Joel Osler, M.D. and Erwin Randolph Parson, Ph.D. Vietnam Veterans: The Road to Recovery. New York: Signet, 1985
Goff, Stanley and Sanders, Robert. Brothers: Black Soldiers in the Nam. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982
Goldman, Peter and Tony Fuller. Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us. New York: Newsweek, 1983
Herbert, Anthony. Soldier. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973
Just, Ward. Military Men. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970
Kelly, George. Lost Soldiers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965
Lifton, Robert J. Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims Nor Executioners. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973
Moskos, Charles. "Why Men Fight: American Combat Soldiers in Vietnam," in, The Vietnam Veterans in Contemporary Society (Washington, D.C.: Veterans Administration, 1971) pp. 8‑17
Reich, Dale E. Good Soldiers Don't Go to Heaven. Whitewater, Wis.: Garden of Eden Press, 1979
Yezzo, Dominick. A G.I.'s Diary. New York: Franklin Watts, 1974
Misc.
Emerson, Gloria. Winners and Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses and Ruins from the Vietnam War. New York: Random House, 1976
Franklin, H. Bruce. Back Where You Came From. New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1975
__________________. M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America. Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992
Griffen, William L. and John Marciano. Teaching the Vietnam War. Montclair: Allanheld, Osmun & Co., 1979
Lifton, Robert Jay. Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans Neither Victims Nor Executioners. New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1973
William, Reese, ed. Unwinding the Vietnam War. Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1987
Non-Fiction about Viet Nam and Vietnamese
Borton, Lady. Sensing The Enemy: An American Woman Among the Boat People of Vietnam. Garden City, NY: The Dial Press, 1984
, After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese. New York: Viking Press, 1995
Buttinger, Joseph. A Dragon Embattled.
, The Smaller Dragon: A Political History of Vietnam. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958
Dellinger, David. Vietnam Revisited. Boston: South End Press, 1986
Don, Tran Van. Our Endless War. San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978
Duiker, William J. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981
Dung, General Van Tien. Our Great Spring Victory. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977
Hayslip, Le Ly, with Jay Wurts. When Heaven And Earth Changed Places. New York: Doubleday, 1989
, with James Hayslip. Child of War, Woman of Peace. New York: Doubleday, 1993
Hess, Martha. Then the Americans Came: Voice From Vietnam. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993
Hodgkin, Thomas. Vietnam: The Revolutionary Path. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981
Jamieson, Neil L. Understanding Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993
Lacouture, Jean (translated by Peter Wiles). Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography. New York: Random House, 1968
Long, Nguyen. After Saigon Fell: Daily Life Under the Vietnamese Communists. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
Marr, David G. Vietnamese Anticolonialism 1885-1925. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971
Ngan, Nguyen Ngoc. The Will of Heaven. New York: EP Dutton, 1981 (an account of a re-education experience)
Pike, Douglas, PAVN: People's Army of Vietnam. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1986
Race, Jeffrey. War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972
SarDesai, D.R. Vietnam: Trial and Tribulations of a Nation. New Delhi: Promilla & Co., 1988
Sheehan, Neil. After the War Was Over: Hanoi and Saigon. New York: Random House, 1992
Truong Nhu Tang. A Viet Cong Memoir. New York: Random House, 1985
Wintle, Justin. Romancing Viet Nam. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991 (a British journalist's account of his travels through post-war Viet Nam)
American Veteran Fiction
Hasford, Gustav. The Short-Timers. New York: Bantam Books, 1979
Heinemann, Larry. Paco's Story. New York: Penguin Books, 1986
________________. Close Quarters. New York: Penguin Books, 1977
Mason, Bobbie Ann. In Country. New York: Harper & Row, 1985
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990
____________. Going After Cacciato. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978
__________. If I Die In A Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969
Weigl, Bruce. The Monkey Wars. Athens: University of Georgia, 1984
Vietnamese Fiction
Huong, Duong Thu. Paradise of the Blind. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1993
, Novel Without a Name. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1995
Ninh, Bao. The Sorrow of War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993
Thiep, Nguyen Huy, The General Retires and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992
Poetry
Bowen, Kevin. Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1994
Ehrhart, W.D., ed. Carrying the Darkness: American Indochina - The Poetry of the Vietnam War. (P) New York: Avon Books, 1985; To Those Who Have Gone Home Tired (P); The Outer Banks (P)
Nguyen, Thanh T. and Bruce Weigl, eds. Poems from Captured Documents. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1994
Rottman, Larry. Voices From the Ho Chi Minh Trail: Poetry of America and Vietnam 1965-1993 (with photographs by Nguyen Trong Thanh and Larry Rottman) Desert Hot Springs, CA: Event Horizon Press, 1993
Bibliographies
Chen, John J.M. Vietnam: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1973
Clifton, Merritt, and others. Those Who Were There. Paradise, Calif.: Dustbooks, 1984. Annotated bibliography of poetry, fiction, and memoirs of Vietnam Vets.