Series in Southeast Asia
Books in Southeast Asia
A Short History of the Vietnam War
A concise, accessible history of one of the most important and fascinating conflicts of the 20th century On March 8, 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade made an amphibious landing at Da Nang on the south central coast of South Vietnam, marking the beginning of a conflict that would haunt American politics and society for many years, even after the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1972. For the people of North Vietnam it was just another in a long line of foreign invaders. For 2,000 years they had struggled for self-determination, coming into conflict during that time with the Chinese, the Mongols, the European colonial powers, the Japanese, and the French. Now it was the turn of the United States, a far-away nation reluctant to go to war but determined to prevent Vietnam from falling into Communist hands. This history explains how the U.S. became involved in its longest war, a conflict that, from the outset, many claimed it could never win. It details the escalation of American involvement from the provision of military advisors and equipment to the threatened South Vietnamese, to an all-out shooting war involving American soldiers, airmen, and sailors, of whom around 58,000 would die and more than 300,000 would be wounded. Their struggle was against an indomitable enemy, able to absorb huge losses in terms of life and infrastructure. The politics of the war are examined and the decisions and ambitions of five presidents are addressed in the light of what many have described as a defeat for American might. The book also explores the relationship of the Vietnam War to the Cold War politics of the time.
Death is No Obstacle(With: Colin Greenland)
Four-page Introduction by Angela Carter: a 142-page interview by Colin Greenland with Michael Moorcock about his writing life. ''Greenland is the ideal interviewer. and Moorcock as an interviewee is open and engaging. Reading their dialogue sometimes feels like eavesdropping on a conversation that has been under way for some time. But Moorcock's fiction nevertheless encompasses so many forms. that this book amounts to a short course on writing techniques compounded with an overview of Moorcock's career. It contains sufficient nuggets of insight to fascinate readers familiar with Moorcock's works.''
Hue 1968
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction The first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down , Hue 1968 is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front’s presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of this pivotal moment.
Rascals In Paradise
The successes of Mr. Michener’s , Tales of the South Pacific and Return to Paradise showed how skilfully he cast the spell of the Pacific over his readers. It is to the Pacific that he returns in collaboration with Mr. Grove Day in Rascals in Paradise . The authors tell the true life stories of nine men and one woman who in the last four centuries sought fame and fortune, and pursued their dreams, in the most romantic of all the world’s oceans. Rascals all, though few without redeeming qualities, they operated on so bizarre, so individual a scale that their lives assumed epic proportions, and their stories amaze as much as they thrill or horrify us. We read of the nineteen-year-old sailor who, in pursuit of his dream of ruling an island kingdom, started a mutiny and with his own hands murdered all the officers of his ship; of the French Marquis who sent shipload after shipload of prospective settlers to a death trap island off New Guinea, having first pocketed their savings; of Bligh, of the mutiny on the Bounty fame, and of that other mutiny he had later to face when Governor of New South Wales; of Coxinga, the Chinese Pirate, who came within an ace of overthrowing the great Manchu dynasty; of Dona Isabel, "one of the supreme bitches of all time", who. set out from Callao in Peru in 1595 to win a Pacific empire for herself; of the fourteen-year-old English boy, Will Mariner, who became chief adviser to the King of the Tonga Islands; and, in modern times, of the fantastic painter on velvet who regularly once a fortnight ran amok in the capital of Tahiti. Violent men, greedy for fame, or power, or money, these "rascals in Paradise" forma a superb portrait gallery, and the authors have done them splendid justice. This is a book for everyone who loves excitement, romance, and the pleasure of good stories well told, and in the telling Mr. Michener and Mr. Day lead us down many of history's least known and most fascinating by-ways.
The Battle of Long Tan
From the bestselling author of Kokoda and Gallipoli comes the epic story of Australia's deadliest Vietnam War battle. 4.31 pm: Enemy [on] left flank. Could be serious. 5.01 pm: Enemy ... penetrating both flanks and to north and south. 5.02: Running short of ammo. Require drop through trees. It was the afternoon of 18 August 1966, hot, humid with grey monsoonal skies. D Company, 6RAR were four kilometres east of their Nui Dat base, on patrol in a rubber plantation not far from the abandoned village of Long Tan. A day after their base had suffered a mortar strike, they were looking for Viet Cong soldiers. Then - just when they were least expecting - they found them. Under withering fire, some Diggers perished, some were grievously wounded, the rest fought on, as they remained under sustained attack. For hours these men fought for their lives against the enemy onslaught. The skies opened and the rain fell as ferocious mortar and automatic fire pinned them down. Snipers shot at close quarters from the trees that surrounded them. The Aussie, Kiwi and Yankee artillery batteries knew it was up to them but, outnumbered and running out of ammunition they fired, loaded, fired as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces just kept coming. And coming. Their only hope was if Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) could reach them before they were wiped out. The APCs did their best but low cloud and thunderstorms meant air support was stalled. A daring helicopter resupply mission was suggested but who would want to fly that? The odds against this small force were monumental... By far the deadliest battle for Australian forces in Vietnam, the Battle of Long Tan has a proud place in the annals of Australian military history - and every ANZAC who fought there could hold his head high. Peter FitzSimons, Australia's greatest storyteller, tells the real story of this classic battle. He reveals the horror, the bravery, the wins and the losses that faced our soldiers. He brings to life the personal stories of the men who fought, the events leading up to that memorable battle and the long war that followed, and the political decisions made in the halls of power that sealed their fates. The Battle of Long Tan is an engrossing and powerful history that shows the costs of war never end.
Valley Of The Shadow: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu
Struggling to reassert control over their Indochinese colonies after World War II, the French established a huge air-land base in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. But when the opposing Vietnamese People's Army (VPA) began massing its forces against the base in late 1953, French commanders seized the opportunity to draw their elusive enemy into a decisive set-piece battle. Defending a series of fortified positions which were reliant upon a single airstrip – and later, risky and inaccurate airdrops – for reinforcement and resupply, the French troops quickly discovered that they had underestimated their enemy. In 56 days of costly close-quarters fighting, the VPA slowly dislodged the French from one strongpoint after another by developing novel tactics and accomplishing incredible feats of engineering. Drawing upon Vietnamese-language sources never previously employed in Western accounts of the siege, Valley of the Shadow is a dramatic re-telling of the climactic battle of the First Indochina War, the conflict that saw the French expelled from their former colony and set the stage for the “American War” in Vietnam.
Valley Of The Shadow: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu
Struggling to reassert control over their Indochinese colonies after World War II, the French established a huge air-land base in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. But when the opposing Vietnamese People's Army (VPA) began massing its forces against the base in late 1953, French commanders seized the opportunity to draw their elusive enemy into a decisive set-piece battle. Defending a series of fortified positions which were reliant upon a single airstrip – and later, risky and inaccurate airdrops – for reinforcement and resupply, the French troops quickly discovered that they had underestimated their enemy. In 56 days of costly close-quarters fighting, the VPA slowly dislodged the French from one strongpoint after another by developing novel tactics and accomplishing incredible feats of engineering. Drawing upon Vietnamese-language sources never previously employed in Western accounts of the siege, Valley of the Shadow is a dramatic re-telling of the climactic battle of the First Indochina War, the conflict that saw the French expelled from their former colony and set the stage for the “American War” in Vietnam.
Valley Of The Shadow: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu
Struggling to reassert control over their Indochinese colonies after World War II, the French established a huge air-land base in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. But when the opposing Vietnamese People's Army (VPA) began massing its forces against the base in late 1953, French commanders seized the opportunity to draw their elusive enemy into a decisive set-piece battle. Defending a series of fortified positions which were reliant upon a single airstrip – and later, risky and inaccurate airdrops – for reinforcement and resupply, the French troops quickly discovered that they had underestimated their enemy. In 56 days of costly close-quarters fighting, the VPA slowly dislodged the French from one strongpoint after another by developing novel tactics and accomplishing incredible feats of engineering. Drawing upon Vietnamese-language sources never previously employed in Western accounts of the siege, Valley of the Shadow is a dramatic re-telling of the climactic battle of the First Indochina War, the conflict that saw the French expelled from their former colony and set the stage for the “American War” in Vietnam.
What It is Like to Go to War
From the author of the award-winning, best-selling novel Matterhorn , comes a brilliant nonfiction book about war In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of a platoon of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his war experience. In What It Is Like to Go to War , Marlantes takes a deeply personal and candid look at what it is like to experience the ordeal of combat, critically examining how we might better prepare our soldiers for war. Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readingsfrom Homer to The Mahabharata to Jung. He makes it clear just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of the journey. Just as Matterhorn is already being acclaimed as acclaimed as a classic of war literature, What It Is Like to Go to War is set to become required reading for anyonesoldier or civilianinterested in this visceral and all too essential part of the human experience.