First, I recently read Paul Hendrickson's The Living and the Dead:
Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996). I recommend it
as an unusual but effective approach to the war. It's longish and
perhaps also a little self-indulgent, but worth the effort. My first
question is what are people's views now about McNamara and what was
once known as his war? I know In Retrospect set off a firestorm of
criticism (I apologize if this question has already been discussed).
Related to the first question, I have the sense an unusual number
of books critical of U.S. government policies related to the war
between 1964 and 1968 have come out in the last couple of years. In
addition to Hendrickson's book, I count nine others, at a minimum,
between 1994 and this year that appear to be focused on LBJ, his
advisors, and the war. Probably I've missed some and I may well have
misunderstood the focus of some I counted, but is this just
coincidence or the emergence of a consensus on that period or
something else entirely? I'd welcome any ideas people might have.
The books I've noted, by the way, are:
George Herring, LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War (1994)
John Prados, The Hidden History of the Vietnam War (1995)
Brian Vandemark, Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the
Escalation of the Vietnam War (1995)
William Gibbons, U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and
Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part IV (1995)
Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the
Vietnam Era (1996)
Edwin Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (1996)
Timothy Lomperis, From People's War to People's Rule: Insurgency,
Intervention, and the Lessons of Vietnam (1996)
Michael Hunt, Lyndon Johnson's War: America's Cold War Crusade in
Vietnam, 1945-1965: A Critical Issue (1996)
Robert Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam,
1941-1975
Many thanks.
Mike Richards
Department of History
Sweet Briar College
Sweet Briar, VA 24595