The September issue of Armchair General magazine contains an article, “10 Essential Vietnam War Books” by James H. Willbanks, a retired Army colonel, who has written widely about the war, in which the author recommends ten “essential books that should be on every historian’s bookshelf.”
Here’s the list, in the order that Col. Willbanks has them in his article:
America’s Last Vietnam Battle: Halting Hanoi’s 1972 Easter Offensive by Dale Andrade
The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966 by Rick Atkinson
The Big Story by Peter Braestrup
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam by Bernard Edelman
America’s Longest War by George Herring
McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H.R. McMaster
We Were Soldiers Once …and Young by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway
Tet! Turning Point in the War by Don Oberdorfer
A Viet Cong Memoir by Truong Nhu Tang
The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam by Martin Windrow
Not a bad list at all. Mine, would include, several others, though. To wit:
A Bright, Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow
Bloods by Wallace Terry
Winners and Losers by Gloria Emerson
The Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace in Vietnam by David Maraniss
Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall
And the following memoirs:
If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien
Fortunate Son by Lew Puller
A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo
Brothers in Arms by William Broyles
Home Before Morning by Lynda Van Devanter
Patches of Fire by Albert French
Keep Your Head Down by Doug Anderson