Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 516
•
978-0-7425-6133-5 • Hardback • March 2010 • $120.00 • (£80.00)
978-0-7425-6134-2 • Paperback • March 2010 • $54.00 • (£37.95)
978-1-4616-3889-6 • eBook • March 2010 • $51.00 • (£34.95)
Andrew J. Rotter is Charles A. Dana Professor of History at Colgate University.
Chapter 1: Getting In, 1945–1952
1. Ho Chi Minh: The Untried Gamble
2. The United States, Its Allies and the Bao Dai Experiment
Chapter 2: Fighting Shy, 1953–1961
3. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Wholehearted Support of Ngo Dinh Diem
4. Geneva, 1954: The Precarious Peace
5. The CIA Comes to Vietnam
Chapter 3: Digging In, 1961–1968
6. No "Non-Essential Areas": Kennedy and Vietnam
7. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution
8. Lyndon Johnson Chooses War
9. The Tet Offensive, 1968
10. A Dissenter in the Administration
Chapter 4: Getting Out, 1968–1975
11. Nixon, Kissinger, and a Pax Americana
12. Bombing Hanoi, Mining Haiphong, and the Moscow Summit
13. Stabbed in the Back
Chapter 5: Allies and Enemies
14. Ngo Dinh Diem, the Impossible Ally
15. Ngo Dinh Diem, Modernizer
16. The Foreign Policy of North Vietnam
17. The National Liberation Front and the Land
Chapter 6: The Battlefield
18. Getting Hit
19. Feeling Cold
20. Nursing and Disillusionment
21. They Did Not Know Good From Evil
22. My Lai: The Killing Begins
Chapter 7: International Dimensions of the War
23. The Soviet Union and American Escalation
24. China and American Escalation
25. The Vietnamese and Global Revolutions
Chapter 8: Laos and Cambodia
26. The War in Laos
27. Bombing Cambodia: A Critique
28. Bombing Cambodia: A Defense
Chapter 9: Interpreting the War
29. A Clash of Cultures
30. An Opportunity for Power
31. A Defense of Freedom
32. An Act of Imperialism
33. An Assertion of Manhood
Chapter 10: The War in America
34. Working-Class War
35. Seeds of a Movement
36. Women at the Barricades, Then and Now
Chapter 11: The Legacy of War
37. Saigon: The End and the Beginning
38. Homecoming USA
39. Amerasians: A People in Between
Chapter 12: Afterword
40. Letting Go
Andrew Rotter has compiled an illuminating selection of essays and book excerpts. His introduction is an insightful, concise history of the Indochina wars. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Marc Leepson, book editor,The VVA Veteran
Thoroughly balanced, providing accounts with different emphases and interpretations of what remains a highly emotional ordeal in our history, Light at the End of the Tunnel offers numerous opportunities to stimulate thought, discussion, and debate. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Kenton Clymer, University of Texas at El Paso
A truly brilliant overview . . . perhaps the best anthology yet assembled. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Palo Alto Daily News
An important work simply because it is so extended. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Indochina Chronology
Andrew Rotter's anthology on the Vietnam War has always been the best book available on this conflict. This third edition has been substantially revised. Rotter has retained those articles that are essential for understanding the scope and complexity of the Vietnam War and has included new articles that will give students even more insight into the many facets of American and Southeast Asian history that continue to haunt us to this day.
— Steven Hood, Ursinus College
This excellent anthology is substantially revised from the first edition—almost half the items included are new. I am delighted that it is back in print and available for class use. (Previous Edition Praise)
— George Herring, University of Kentucky
Light at the End of the Tunnel is the best Vietnam War anthology available. Andrew Rotter’s freshman-friendly twenty-page capsule history of this complex conflict is a godsend to teachers and worth the price of the book all by itself. I didn't think this anthology could get any better, but darned if Rotter hasn't pulled it off.
— Seth Jacobs, Boston College
As in the earlier editions, Andrew Rotter shows a keen understanding of the best ways to enhance classroom debate, compiling a text that is accessible, readable, and sensitive to the deep interest in Vietnam shared by today's students. In its diversity and centrality of topics, its balanced inclusion of readable, accessible and academically respected articles, and its genuine tolerance and sympathy, this text remains one of the best options available in support of Vietnam courses.
— Susan Farnsworth, Trinity (Washington) University
The third edition includes greater coverage of the Vietnamese experience of the war and reflects the growing interest in understanding the war as an international event, not just a bilateral or trilateral conflict
A chronological survey of the U.S. war in Vietnam
Personal accounts of participants
Excerpts on the war itself that examine, in turn, the Vietnamese who fought with and against the Americans, the Vietnam battlefield, the global Cold War context of the war, and the overflow of the Vietnam War into neighboring Laos and Cambodia
Discusses the consequences of the war for Vietnam and the United States, covering, respectively, the scholarly controversy that has emerged over the sources and results of the war, the antiwar movement and some of its impact on American society, and the legacy of the war for the two countries and peoples most directly involved in it
Provides the perspective of someone who lived in Vietnam during the war