Vietnam's American War: A New History

The American war in Vietnam was so much more than the sum of its battles. To make sense of it, we must look beyond the conflict itself. We must understand its context and, above all, the formative experiences, worldview, and motivations of those who devised communist strategies and tactics. Vietnam's American War, now in its second edition, remains a story of how and why Hanoi won. However, this revised and expanded edition offers more extensive and nuanced insights into Southern Vietnamese history, politics, and society. It puts to rest the myth of Vietnamese national unity by documenting the myriad, profound local fractures exacerbated by US intervention. It also includes over thirty-five new images intended to highlight that the Vietnam War was, fundamentally, a Vietnamese civil war and tragedy. This new edition is as richly detailed as it is original, eye-opening, and absorbing.

Pierre Asselin is Dwight E. Stanford Chair in the History of US Foreign Relations at San Diego State University. He is the author of A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), winner of the 2003 Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize; Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (University of California Press, 2013), winner of the 2013 Arthur Goodzeit Book Award; and the subject of today’s discussion Vietnam’s American War: A New History (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 2024). The latter, surveying the Vietnamese communist experience during the Vietnam War, has become a staple in both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses addressing the conflict. A second, extensively revised and updated edition was published by Cambridge in 2024. Asselin is editor of The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings, forthcoming in February 2025. 

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year.