Introduction List of Abbreviations Part I: Historical Narrative 1. Studying the Vietnam War 2. Vietnam: Historical Background Roots of the Vietnamese Culture and State The Impact of French Colonialism The Rise of Vietnamese Nationalism The Origins of Vietnamese Communism 3. United States: Historical Background Idealism and Realism in U.S. Foreign Relations The United States and the Open Door in Asia The World Wars: The Legacies of Wilson and Munich The Origins of the Cold War 4. The French War in Vietnam The August Revolution Outbreak of the Franco-Vietminh War U.S.

Support of France Dienbienphu and the Geneva Conference 5. The Diem Years: Eisenhower The Decision to Back Ngo Dinh Diem The Non-election of 1956 The Illusion of Nation Building NLF: Rise of the Southern Insurgency 6. The Diem Years: Kennedy Counterinsurgency Warfare The Buddhist Crisis The Diem Assassination What if Kennedy Had Lived? 7. The American War in Vietnam: Escalation The Gulf of Tonkin Incident Rolling Thunder Johnson Decides on a Land War in Asia Theories of Causation 8. The American War in Vietnam: Strategy The Draft Attrition Strategy and Body Count Humpin' It: The American Soldier The Air War Diplomacy The Resilient Enemy 9. The American War in Vietnam: The Limits of Power The Tet offensive The Antiwar Movement and the Media Johnson's Decision to Stop Escalation The Presidential Election of 1968 10. The American War in Vietnam: De-escalation Vietnamization and More Bombing Cambodia and Kent State Negotiations and the Paris Peace Accords DRV Victory in 1975 11. The War What Will Not Go Away The Postwar Wars in Southeast Asia American Vietnam Veterans Films, Fiction, and Poetry Postmortems Part II: The Vietnam War from A to Z Part III: Chronology Part IV: Resource Guide 1.

General Works 2. History of Southeast Asia and U.S. Foreign Relations 3. The Diem Years 4. North Vietnam and the Vietcong 5. Escalation of the American War 6. The American Way of War 7.

The Limits of American Power 8. The End of the American War 9. The Legacy of the Vietnam War 10. Films and Documentaries 11. Electronic Resources Part V: Appendices Appendix 1. Documents Appendix 2. Statistics Index.