Ward Geoffrey C - The Vietnam War: an Intimate History

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (with Ken Burns)

A Disposition to Be Rich: Ferdinand Ward, the Greatest Swindler of the Gilded Age

The War: An Intimate History (with Ken Burns)

Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life (with Wynton Marsalis)

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

Mark Twain (with Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns)

Jazz: A History of Americas Music (with Ken Burns)

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (with Ken Burns)

The Year of the Tiger

The West: An Illustrated History

Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friendship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley

Baseball: An Illustrated History (with Ken Burns)

Tiger-Wallahs: Encounters with the Men Who Tried to Save the Greatest of the Cats (with Diane Raines Ward)

American Originals: The Private Worlds of Some Singular Men and Women

The Civil War: An Illustrated History (with Ken Burns and Ric Burns)

A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt

Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905

Treasures of the World: The Maharajahs

The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (with Geoffrey C. Ward)

The War: An Intimate History (with Geoffrey C. Ward)

Mark Twain (with Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan)

Jazz: A History of Americas Music (with Geoffrey C. Ward)

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (with Geoffrey C. Ward)

Lewis & Clark (with Dayton Duncan)

The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God (with Amy S. Burns)

Baseball: An Illustrated History (with Geoffrey C. Ward)

The Civil War: An Illustrated History (with Geoffrey C. Ward and Ric Burns)

Lit by shafts of sunlight slanting through a triple-canopy forest, North Vietnamese troops pick their way through the Truong Son mountains on their way to war.

A GI pauses for a cigarette during a search-and-destroy operation southwest of Danang, 1967.

North Vietnamese radioman at work during a battle with South Vietnamese armored troops, Quang Tri Province, 1970

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2017 The Vietnam Film Project, LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ward, Geoffrey C., author. | Burns, Ken, 1953 writer of introduction. | Novick, Lynn, writer of introduction.

Title: The Vietnam war : an intimate history / Geoffrey C. Ward ; based on a documentary film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick ; with an introduction by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick.

Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017015686 | ISBN 9780307700254 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781524733100 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Vietnam War, 19611975.

Classification: LCC DS557.7.W368 2017 | DDC 959.704/3dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015686

Cover illustration 2017 Public Broadcasting Service

Cover design by Carol Devine Carson

Ebook ISBN9781524733100

v4.1

a

For Dewy Ward and Robert K. Burns, Jr., who understood it first

Still blanketed in yellow smoke laid down to mark their position so that a U.S. airstrike would not inadvertently hit them, GIs unwind after a firefight near Hue.

A wounded American and a wounded South Vietnamese soldier comfort each other aboard a medevac helicopter that has lifted them off the battlefield near An Loc, 1972.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE
DJ VU | 18581961

CHAPTER TWO
RIDING THE TIGER | 19611963

CHAPTER THREE
THE RIVER STYX | JANUARY 1964DECEMBER 1965

CHAPTER FOUR
RESOLVE | JANUARY 1966JUNE 1967

CHAPTER FIVE
WHAT WE DO | JULYDECEMBER 1967

CHAPTER SIX
THINGS FALL APART | JANUARYJUNE 1968

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE VENEER OF CIVILIZATION | JUNE 1968APRIL 1969

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD | MAY 1969DECEMBER 1970

CHAPTER NINE
A DISRESPECTFUL LOYALTY | JANUARY 1971MARCH 1973

CHAPTER TEN
THE WEIGHT OF MEMORY | MARCH 1973APRIL 1975

INTRODUCTION

by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

O N APRIL 23, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Tulane University convocation in New Orleans. As the president took the stage, more than 100,000 North Vietnamese troops were massing on the outskirts of Saigon, having overrun almost all of South Vietnam in just three months. Thirty years after the United States first became involved in Southeast Asia, ten years after the Marines had landed in Danang, the ill-fated country for which more than 58,000 Americans had died was on the verge of defeat. We, of course, are saddened indeed by the [tragic] events in Indochina, the president said. He reminded the subdued crowd that 160 years earlier America had recovered from another conflict in which she had suffered humiliation and a measure of defeatthe War of 1812and promised that the nation would once again regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But, he continued to thunderous applause, it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned. The time had come, the president said, to unify, to bind up the nations woundsand begin a great national reconciliation. Just seven days later, North Vietnamese soldiers stormed the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon and raised the communist flag. The Vietnam War was over.

Its been more than forty years now, and despite President Fords optimism, we have been unable to put that war behind us. The deep wounds it inflicted on our nation, our communities, our families, and our politics have festered. As Army veteran Phil Gioia said in an interview for our documentary series, The Vietnam War drove a stake right into the heart of America. It polarized the country as it had probably never been polarized since before the Civil War, and weve never recovered.