The Vietnam War was the longest war in American history. The conflict began gradually after World War II. The Eisenhower administration supported southern Vietnam and increased American aid after the fall of a fortress at Dien Bien Phu to nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh in 1954. John F. Kennedy continued the commitment of American "advisors" through 1963. Lyndon B. Johnson chose to escalate the conflict dramatically after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. American troop levels peaked in 1968 at over half a million soldiers. Also in 1968, the T t offensive demonstrated to the American public that their leaders' claims of progress were false and that the conflict was not worth the cost. Assassinations, riots, and the revelation of the My Lai massacre further added to public discontent, and with the election of 1969, Richard Nixon promised to end the war "with honor." Four long years later, American and Vietnamese leaders signed a peace treaty. The war cost over fifty thousand American lives, and many considered it a military defeat and moral failure. The conflict concluded with the 1975 reunification of Vietnam, but the war lingered in the minds of Americans. The Vietnam War remains a powerful memory in American culture because the conflict was a turning point in recent American history.
This book is a comprehensive study of the content, author demographics, publishing history, and media representation of the most prominent Vietnam veteran memoirs published between 1967 and 2005. These personal narratives are important because they have affected the collective memory of the Vietnam War for decades.