The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Ken Burns (English) Hardcover Book

Description: The Vietnam War by Ken Burns, Geoffrey C. Ward "A comprehensive look at the Vietnam War"-- FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, The War, and more- a vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart--the companion volume to the major PBS film to air in September 2017.From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The Roosevelts, and others- a vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart--the companion volume to the major, multipart PBS film to be aired in September 2017.More than forty years after it ended, the Vietnam War continues to haunt our country. We still argue over why we were there, whether we could have won, and who was right and wrong in their response to the conflict. When the war divided the country, it created deep political fault lines that continue to divide us today. Now, continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed collaborations, the authors draw on dozens and dozens of interviews in America and Vietnam to give us the perspectives of people involved at all levels of the war- U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers and their families, high-level officials in America and Vietnam, antiwar protestors, POWs, and many more. The book plunges us into the chaos and intensity of combat, even as it explains the rationale that got us into Vietnam and kept us there for so many years. Rather than taking sides, the book seeks to understand why the war happened the way it did, and to clarify its complicated legacy. Beautifully written and richly illustrated, this is a tour de force that is certain to launch a new national conversation. Author Biography GEOFFREY C. WARD, historian and screenwriter, is the author of nineteen books, including A First-Class Temperament- The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has written or cowritten many documentary films, including The War, The Civil War, Baseball, The West, Mark Twain, Not for Ourselves Alone, and Jazz.KEN BURNS,the producer and director of numerous film series, including Vietnam, The Roosevelts, and The War, founded his own documentary film company, Florentine Films, in 1976. His landmark film The Civil War was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television, and his work has won numerous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards, and two Academy Award nominations. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.LYNN NOVICKs previous directing credits include Prohibition, a three part series on the rise, rule, and fall of the 18th Amendment; Frank Lloyd Wright, a two part biography of the architect; and The Tenth Inning, a four hour sequel to Burnss Baseball, which Novick produced. She also produced his 20 hour series, Jazz. She has received Peabody and Emmy awards. Review "The companion volume to Burns Vietnam War documentary series on PBS, the book stands alone as a powerful summary of the whole conflict. It tells the story of the war from every conceivable angle, including that of the young Vietnamese fighters. Its extraordinarily well-reported and written, and filled with memorable photographs and illustrations—a reminder that the war was, perhaps for the first time, shaped as much by powerful images as written reports."—Lancaster Online, Mark Bowdens "Ten Favorite Books on the Vietnam War""A vivid and often captivating volume…a valuable resource." —David Greenberg, The New York Times Book Review "Once again Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns deliver the grand historical goods in this feast of a book. For those too young to remember the Vietnam War, this is the essential primer. For those old enough to have Vietnam flashbacks or battle scars, read it and weep. Highly recommended!!" —Douglas Brinkley"A sweeping, richly illustrated narrative of a conflict fast retreating in memory... As they have done in numerous collaborations, Ward and Burns take a vast topic and personalize it... Of particular value is the inclusion of Vietnamese voices on both sides of the conflict, most of whom agree more than four decades later that the question of who won or lost is less important than the fact that no one really prevailed... The text is accompanied by more than 500 photographs, some of them immediately recognizable...many others fresh... Accompanying the PBS series to be aired in September 2017, this is an outstanding, indispensable survey of the Vietnam War." —Kirkus, (starred review) "Lucid, flowing, and dramatic… Robustly detailed writing… Eye-opening… Powerful in its own right… In their new intimate yet capacious history, the award-winning, audience-enthralling duo of historian and screenwriter Ward and documentarian extraordinaire Burns investigate the complex, divisive, and tragic Vietnam War from a unique plurality of perspectives… This is a vivid, affecting, definitive, and essential illustrated history."—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)"Lavishly illustrated…. Well-written and deeply researched, this history covers virtually every aspect of the French and American wars in Vietnam from 1945-1975, focusing mainly on military, diplomatic, and political issues…. Anyone looking for an expansive overview of the Vietnam War will find much to admire here." —Publishers Weekly Promotional From the award-winning historian and filmmakers (The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The Roosevelts, among others)- a vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart--the companion volume to the major, multipart PBS film to be aired in September 2017. Review Quote "A sweeping, richly illustrated narrative of a conflict fast retreating in memory... As they have done in numerous collaborations, Ward and Burns take a vast topic and personalize it... Of particular value is the inclusion of Vietnamese voices on both sides of the conflict, most of whom agree more than four decades later that the question of who won or lost is less important than the fact that no one really prevailed... The text is accompanied by more than 500 photographs, some of them immediately recognizable...many others fresh... Accompanying the PBS series to be aired in September 2017, this is an outstanding, indispensable survey of the Vietnam War." -- Kirkus , (starred review) "Lucid, flowing, and dramatic... Robustly detailed writing... Eye-opening... Powerful in its own right... In their new intimate yet capacious history, the award-winning, audience-enthralling duo of historian and screenwriter Ward and documentarian extraordinaire Burns investigate the complex, divisive, and tragic Vietnam War from a unique plurality of perspectives... This is a vivid, affecting, definitive, and essential illustrated history." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) Promotional "Headline" From the award-winning historian and filmmakers ( The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The Roosevelts, among others)- a vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart--the companion volume to the major, multipart PBS film to be aired in September 2017 . Excerpt from Book Introduction On April 23, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Tulane University convocation in New Orleans. As the president took the stage, more than 100,000 North Vietnamese troops were massing on the outskirts of Saigon, having overrun almost all of South Vietnam in just three months. Thirty years after the United States first became involved in Southeast Asia, ten years after the Marines had landed in Danang, the ill-fated country for which more than 58,000 Americans had died was on the verge of defeat. "We, of course, are saddened indeed by the [tragic] events in Indochina," the president said. He reminded the subdued crowd that 160 years earlier America had recovered from another conflict in which she had suffered "humiliation and a measure of defeat"--the War of 1812--and promised that the nation would once again "regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam." But, he continued to thunderous applause, "it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." The time had come, the president said, "to unify, to bind up the nations wounds . . . and begin a great national reconciliation." Just seven days later, North Vietnamese soldiers stormed the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon and raised the communist flag. The Vietnam War was over. Its been more than forty years now, and despite President Fords optimism, we have been unable to put that war behind us. The deep wounds it inflicted on our nation, our communities, our families, and our politics have festered. As Army veteran Phil Gioia said in an interview for our documentary series, "The Vietnam War drove a stake right into the heart of America. It polarized the country as it had probably never been polarized since before the Civil War, and weve never recovered." Nearly ten years ago, as we were completing post-production on a seven-part series about the American experience in the World War II, we resolved to turn our attention to the painful, bitter, confounding, and much misunderstood tragedy that is the war in Vietnam. It has been our privilege throughout this undertaking to collaborate with the writer, Geoffrey C. Ward, and our producer, Sarah Botstein, along with our team of editors, researchers, and coproducers. We were also ably assisted by an invaluable board of advisers, historical consultants and veterans of the war who saved us from innumerable mistakes, but, more importantly, pointed us to the critical moments and astonishing contradictions that haunt any serious study of the Vietnam War. From the start, we vowed to each other that we would avoid the limits of a binary political perspective and the shortcuts of conventional wisdom and superficial history. This was a war of many perspectives, a Rashomon of equally plausible "stories," of secrets, lies, and distortions at every turn. We wished to try to contain and faithfully reflect those seemingly irreconcilable outlooks. We were interested in trying to understand the colonial experience of the French--and the way it eerily prefigured what would befall the United States in subsequent years. We wanted to find out what actually happened in the halls of power in Washington, Saigon, and Hanoi, and to get to know the leaders who made the decisions that determined the fates of millions. Through the availability of recently declassified records, ongoing scholarship, and revelatory, sometimes shocking, audio recordings, the actions and motives of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon are laid bare, as are the complicated power struggles going on in South Vietnam during the autocratic, ruthless regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and the succession of generals who followed him. Of particular focus for us were the fascinating political dynamics in Hanoi, where the familiar figure of Ho Chi Minh fought for supremacy with other less-well-known but more powerful figures. Most important, we wanted to understand what the war was like on the battlefield and on the home front, and we wanted to find out why, as Marine veteran Karl Marlantes told us, Americans have been unable to have a civil conversation about one of the most consequential events in our history. "For years, we just did not talk about that war," he said. "You would open your mouth and youd ask, which side was this person on? Am I going to get into a fight here? Its like living in a family with an alcoholic father . . . you know, shh, we dont talk about that." Wars, all wars, create a kind of dissonance that obfuscates and deflects clear understanding. Vietnam is no different. To shed new light on such a complicated and unsettled time in our history, to struggle to comprehend the special dissonance that is the Vietnam War, we needed to look beyond the familiar stories Americans have told about the war and include as many different perspectives as our narrative could accommodate. Nearly one hundred "ordinary" people agreed to share their stories with us on camera: grunts and officers in the Army and Marines, prisoners of war, a fighter pilot and a helicopter crew chief, a Gold Star mother and the sister of a fallen soldier, a nurse, college students, reporters, protesters, military analysts, spies, and many others. To have been present as they bore witness to their experiences remains for us one of the enduring gifts of this project. Throughout our long production, we were inspired by the architect Maya Lin, whose Vietnam Veterans Memorial was initially as controversial as the war itself, but which has become one of Americas sacred places. When she unveiled her design in 1981, Lin told the press that her memorial to the Americans who died in the war would be a journey "that would make you experience death, and where youd have to be an observer, where you could never really fully be with the dead. . . . [It isnt] something that was going to say, Its all right, its all over. Because its not." Nothing, certainly not our film or book, can make the tragedy of the Vietnam War all right. But we can, and we must, honor the courage, heroism, and sacrifice of those who served, those who died, and those who participated in the war against the war. As filmmakers, we have tried to do that the only way we know how; by listening to their stories. "Its almost going to make me cry," Army veteran Vincent Okamoto told us, remembering the infantry company he led in Vietnam in 1968. "Nineteen-, twenty-year-old high school dropouts that come from the lowest socioeconomic rung of American society . . . they didnt have the escape routes that the elite and the wealthy and the privileged had . . . but to see these kids, who had the least to gain. . . they werent going be rewarded for their service in Vietnam. And yet, their infinite patience, their loyalty to each other, their courage under fire, was just phenomenal. And you would ask yourself: how does America produce young men like this?" While Okamoto and hundreds of thousands of other Americans were fighting and dying in a brutal and bloody war overseas, hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens were taking to the streets back home to protest against that war. As the antiwar activist Bill Zimmerman recalled for us, "People who supported the war were fond of saying My country right or wrong . . . or better dead than red. Those sentiments seemed insane to us. We dont want to live in a country that were going to support whether its right or wrong . . . so we began an era in which two groups of Americans, both thinking that they were acting patriotically, went to war with each other." A chasm opened in American society, and on both sides of the divide things were said--and things were done--that could never be unsaid, could never be undone. "When I see the war protesters . . . intellectually I certainly understand their right to the freedom of speech," Army adviser James Willbanks remembered, "but I will tell you that when I see them waving NLF flags, the enemy that I and my friends had to fight and some of my friends had to die fighting, that doesnt sit very well with me." When Americans talk about the Vietnam War, the scholar and novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote, too often we are just talking about ourselves. We were determined not to make that mistake. How could we hope to make sense of this turbulent time in our history, or to explore the humanity and the inhumanity of all sides, without hearing directly from our allies and our enemies--the Vietnamese soldiers and civilians we fought with, and against? Off and on for several years, we traveled to Texas, California, and Virginia to get to know many Vietnamese Americans who came to the United States as refugees, having suffered the unimaginable loss not just of their families, friends, and comrades, but of their country. They spoke honestly about the failings of their own government, and shared their doubts and fears about whether the Republic of South Vietnam under Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky had been worth fighting for. "Thieu [and] Ky, they were corrupt," Saigon native Phan Quang Tue remembered. "They abused their position. And they received more from Vietnam than Vietnam received from them. We paid a very high price for having leaders like Ky and Thieu. And we continue to pay the price." To understand what the war was like for the winners, we traveled to Vietnam, traversing the length of the country, meeting and interviewing veterans and civilians. We were surprised to discover that the war remains as unsettled and painful for them as it is for us. For decades, they too have avoided speaking about what happened. The memory of the nearly incomprehensible price they paid in "blood and bone" has been too grievous. But now, as Description for Library Another big collaboration from Ward, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and celebrated filmmaker Burns, this work serves as the companion to a ten-part, 18-hour PBS documentary to be aired in September 2017. Details ISBN0307700259 Author Geoffrey C. Ward Publisher Alfred A. Knopf Year 2017 ISBN-10 0307700259 ISBN-13 9780307700254 Format Hardcover Imprint Alfred A. Knopf Subtitle An Intimate History Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States DEWEY 959.7043 Media Book Short Title The Vietnam War Language English UK Release Date 2017-09-05 Pages 640 Publication Date 2017-09-05 AU Release Date 2017-09-05 NZ Release Date 2017-09-05 US Release Date 2017-09-05 Narrator Matthew Beard Illustrator Guido Chee Birth 1927 Affiliation Lecturer, University of Fort Hare Position Professor Qualifications J.D. Illustrations 521 PHOTOGRAPHS AND 12 MAPS Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:141688187;

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