The first interpretive history that covers the antiwar movement in this country throughout the entire Vietnam era. Richly illustrated with compelling photographs of the times, the book chronicles the war struggle that provoked a struggle about America.

This book provides a comprehensive narrative history of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, from 1942 to 1975--with a concluding section that traces U.S.-Vietnam relations from the end of the war in 1975 to the present. Unlike most general histories of U.S. involvement in Vietnam--which are either conventional diplomatic or military histories--this volume synthesizes the perspectives to explore both dimensions of the struggle in greater depth, elucidating more of the complexities of the U.S.-Vietnam entanglement. It explains why Americans tried so hard for so long to stop the spread of Communism into Indochina, and why they failed. Key topics: The Fall of Saigon: The End as Prelude. Vietnam: A Place and A People. The Elephant and the Tiger. An Experiment in Nation Building. Raising the Stakes. Going to War. The Chain of Thunders. The Year of the Monkey. A War to End a War. The End of the Tunnel. Market: For anyone curious to know about the long American involvement in Southeast Asia, 1942-1975.

This collection of 14 essays, generated by a 1990 conference on the Vietnam antiwar movement, analyzes movement strategies, the role of the military and women in resistance, and the movement in the schools. [Publishers Weekly].

The disappearance behind the Iron Curtain of the American brothers Noel and Hermann Field in 1949, followed by that of Noel’s wife and their foster daughter, was one of the most publicized international mysteries of the Cold War. This dual memoir gives an intensely human dimension to that struggle, with Hermann narrating all that happened to him from the day he was abducted from the Warsaw airport to his release five years later, and Kate relating her unrelenting efforts to find her husband. Thousands of potential victims of Hitler’s dragnet were rescued in 1939 and during World War II through separate efforts of the Field brothers. Arrested in Czechoslovakia in 1949, Noel was taken to Hungary and used as an example of American perfidy in show trials. Hermann went to Poland primarily to find out what had happened to his brother. After Hermann’s abduction, he was taken to the cellar of a secret Polish prison, where he was held for five years. He gives us a detailed account of his battle to survive, alternating despair and horror with mordant humor. Meanwhile, his family had no idea whether he was still alive and if so, where. This moving story, based on detailed notes made by the authors during and shortly after the events described, presents an inside-outside counterpoint, as Hermann’s chapters on his inward journey in his cellar world alternate with Kate’s efforts in London to find him by scrutinizing accounts of political events in Eastern Europe for clues and penetrating the diplomatic corridors of power in the West for help. Hermann had been arrested by a Polish security agent who later defected and became one of the West’s most important informants on Soviet operations in Eastern Europe. The search for the Field brothers was complicated by their history of leftist connections, for this tense period in the Cold War was also the era of McCarthyism in the United States. The book ends with an Epilogue that analyzes the events of fifty years ago in the light of what we know today, as the result of newly available archival material.

The paradoxical and tragic story of America's most prominent Loyalist - a man caught between king and country.

The great tragedy of the twenty-eighth President as witnessed by his loyal lieutenant, and the thirty-first President.

This classic work of scholarship and empathy tells the story of the self-creation of the African-American people. It assesses the full impact of the Middle Passage -- "the most traumatizing mass human migration in modern history" -- and of North American slavery both on the enslaved and on those who enslaved them. It explores the ways in which a nominally free society perverted its own freedoms and denied the fact that an inhuman institution lies at the heart of the American experience. The authority and eloquence of this work make it essential reading for all who want to understand the American past and present.

Joseph McCarthy was not yet a household name in 1950 when Owen Lattimore was labeled by the senator from Wisconsin as the “top Russian espionage agent in the country.” Lattimore, in Kabul, Afghanistan, learned about the accusation a week later. Having already lost valuable time to rebut the smear, he succinctly cabled back that the charge was “pure moonshine,” and returned to the United States to defend his good name. He soon dared McCarthy to utter his slander in a venue other than the Senate, where congressional immunity shielded him from lawsuits, but he refused to do so. Following a torturous Senate inquisition, Lattimore published this riveting book which he wrote in white-hot indignation. Judged at the time to be “a masterpiece of factual exposition [and] a social document of first-rate importance,”* this absorbing narrative chronicles how the ordeal threw Lattimore’s life into perilous straits, and how he defended himself, while undermining the credibility of his accusers. In a battle for his very liberty, Lattimore prepared for the equivalent of an alley fight with the brawling senator. His supremely competent wife, Eleanor, was his trusted aide; along with attorney Abe Fortas they drew out of Lattimore’s writings passages that would prove his loyalty. Yet, as a scholar who was accustomed to nuanced interpretations of current affairs, his accusers were able to conflate the same writings into a traitor’s hidden agenda. Ordeal by Slander was the first great book to come out of the McCarthy era, and it remains a supremely topical book for today. “A tremendously stirring, human drama.”—The Atlantic Monthly “A disturbing and illuminating book.”—The New Yorker

Richter examines a wide range of primary documents to survey the responses of the peoples of the Iroquois League--the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras--to the challenges of the European colonialization of North America. He demonstrates that by the early eighteenth century a series of creative adaptations in politics and diplomacy allowed the peoples of the Longhouse to preserve their cultural autonomy in a land now dominated by foreign powers.

This book demonstrates how only a small number of African writers--like Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Nuruddin Farah, and Wole Soyinka--have become known outside of their own continent. It also details the enormous obstacles they face within Africa to get their work published, let alone to support themselves financially from their writing. Charles R. Larson combines writers' own testimony, pen portraits of their lives, and factual investigation to explore the full dimensions of this problem.