36 Vietnam War books

American Power and the New Mandarins is a book by the US academic Noam Chomsky, largely written in 1968, published in 1969. It was his first political book and sets out in detail his opposition to the Vietnam War.

The Best and the Brightest (1972) is an account by journalist David Halberstam of the origins of the Vietnam War published by Random House. The focus of the book is on the foreign policy crafted by academics and intellectuals who were in President John F. Kennedy's administration, and the consequences of those policies in Vietnam. The title referred to Kennedy's "whiz kids"—leaders of industry and academia brought into the administration—whom Halberstam characterized as insisting on "brilliant policies that defied common sense" in Vietnam, often against the advice of career U.S. Department of State employees.

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988) is a book by Neil Sheehan, a former New York Times reporter, about U.S. Army lieutenant colonel John Paul Vann and the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Cage is a 2002 book by Tom Abraham. The work centers on his time spent serving in the United States Army in Vietnam and thereafter, and it caused controversy among veterans of the war when it was revealed that he had never been missing from his unit as claimed in the book.

Cat Shit One is a three volume manga series written and illustrated by Motofumi Kobayashi. It was published in North America and the United Kingdom in 2004 by ADV Manga. It was also released in Poland in 2006, also under the title Cat Shit One. It has been released in France, Belgium and Spain, as Cat Shit One, by Glénat in 2006.

Chickenhawk is Robert Mason's narrative of his experiences as a "Huey" UH-1 Iroquois helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. The book chronicles his enlistment, flight training, deployment to and experiences in Vietnam, and his experiences after returning from the war.

Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam is a 1997 book written by H. R. McMaster, at the time a major in the United States Army. The book presents a case indicting former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his principal civilian and military advisers for losing the Vietnam War. The book was based on McMaster's Ph.D. thesis at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dispatches is a New Journalism book by Michael Herr that describes the author's experiences in Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire magazine. First published in 1977, Dispatches was one of the first pieces of American literature that portrayed the experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War for American readers.

Dr. America: The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley, 1927-1961 is a book written by James T. Fisher, providing a historical discussion of Thomas Anthony Dooley III, an American medical missionary who worked in Vietnam and Laos in the 50s and early 60s. The book itself is viewed not only as a statement on Dooley’s "lives" as a medical missionary, but it is also a socially scientific analysis of his life. A central argument of the book is that Dooley’s work laid the ideological foundation for U.S. entry into Vietnam. Other important topics discussed are Dooley's personal journey towards becoming a "Jungle Doctor," Dooley's similarities and differences from Albert Schweitzer, Dooley as a contemporary Jesus or a redeemed man, and Dooley as a "historical bridge" between anticommunist McCarthyism and the President Kennedy's Vietnam policy. The biography is one volume of a series titled Culture, Politics, and the Cold War edited by Christian G. Appy.

Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam is a 2012 book by the Cornell University historian Fredrik Logevall, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History. It also won the inaugural American Library in Paris Book Award and the 2013 Arthur Ross Book Award and was a runner-up for the Cundill Prize. The book covers the Vietnam conflict right from the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference till 1959, when the first Americans soldiers are killed in an ambush near Saigon in Vietnam, focusing on the Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh.

Fallen Never Forgotten: Vietnam Memorials in the USA is a large sized hardcover book that covers more than 50 Vietnam Memorials in the United States of America. The book was written by a Vietnam Veteran named Ronny Ymbras and his oldest son Matthew Ymbras.

Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972) is a book by American journalist Frances FitzGerald (1940-) about Vietnam, its history and national character, and the United States warfare there. It was initially published by both Little, Brown and Company and Back Bay Publishing. The book was ranked by critics as one of the top books of the year, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 10 weeks, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, the Bancroft Prize for history, the National Book Award and the Hillman Prize. It was published in paperback in 1973 by Vintage Books.

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is a 1992 collection of short stories by Robert Olen Butler. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993.

The Green Berets is a book (ISBN 0-312-98492-8) written by Robin Moore about the Green Berets during the Vietnam War. First published in 1965, it became a best-selling paperback in 1966. The latest edition was published in 2016.

Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War is a 2010 non-fiction book by author Bruce Henderson. Hero Found is a biography of Vietnam War hero Dieter Dengler, a German-born United States Navy naval aviator who endured six months of imprisonment and torture before being rescued. Dengler survived 23 days in the jungle after escaping from a Pathet Lao prison camp.

Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned From Vietnam is a book of selected correspondence published in 1989. Its genesis was a controversial newspaper column of 20 July 1987 in which Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist Bob Greene asked whether there was any truth to the folklore that Vietnam veterans had been spat upon when they returned from the war zone. Greene believed the tale was an urban legend. The overwhelming response to his original column led to four more columns, then to a book collection of the most notable responses.

Into the Mouth of the Cat: The Story of Lance Sijan, Hero of Vietnam is a book written by Malcolm McConnell and copyrighted in 1985 by Norton publishers.

Last Stand at Khe Sanh: The U.S. Marines' Finest Hour in Vietnam is a book written by American journalist Gregg Jones and published by Da Capo Press in April 2014. It is Jones' third book.

The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam is a book by Barbara W. Tuchman, an American historian and author. It was published on March 19, 1984, by Knopf in New York.

A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War is an artist book published in 1992 at the time of the Addison Gallery of American Art exhibition, “A Matter of Conscience” and “Vietnam Revisited.” It contains oral histories of Vietnam era GIs gathered and edited by Willa Seidenberg and William Short and 58 photographs by William Short. Each oral history is complemented by a portrait in which the Vietnam veteran holds an object of some significance such as a newspaper clipping, a legal document, a book, or photograph. The large black and white photographs allow readers to see the veteran while reading the brief but moving oral histories to learn why they turned against the Vietnam War. The veterans' stories and portraits were collected over a five-year period and have been exhibited throughout the United States, Vietnam, Japan and Australia. A number of them were also included in the book Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty. It was published in September 2019 by New Village Press.

The New Soldier was published as both a hard and soft cover book in October, 1971, by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Principally a photographic essay accompanied by text, the work was edited by David Thorne and George Butler, with a section written by John Kerry. The work includes photographs captured by many photographers across five days in April, 1971.

The Nightingale's Song is a 1995 book by Baltimore Sun journalist Robert Timberg. It relates the military and political careers of five graduates of the United States Naval Academy, most of whom served during the Vietnam War in either the United States Navy or United States Marine Corps: John McCain, Bud McFarlane, Oliver North, John Poindexter, and Jim Webb. Timberg himself was also a Naval Academy graduate and served in Vietnam with the Marine Corps, where he was badly wounded.

Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy is a book written by Telford Taylor, the Chief Counsel Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

The Odd Angry Shot, by William Nagle based on his own experience in 3 Squadron SAS Australian Army, portrays the boredom, mateship, humour, and fear of a group of Australian soldiers deployed to South Vietnam in the late 1960s. The 1975 book was made into a movie of the same name released in 1979.

The Political Economy of Human Rights is a 1979 two-volume work by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. The authors offer a critique of United States foreign policy, particularly in Indochina.

The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam is a 1998 book by Vietnam veteran and sociology professor Jerry Lembcke. The book is an analysis of the widely believed narrative that American soldiers were spat upon and insulted by anti-war protesters upon returning home from the Vietnam War. The book examines the origin of the earliest stories; the popularization of the "spat-upon image" through Hollywood films and other media, and the role of print news media in perpetuating the now iconic image through which the history of the war and anti-war movement has come to be represented.

Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History (1998) is a self-published book by B. G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran, and Glenna Whitley, an investigative journalist. It reveals that numerous people claiming to have been mentally injured by serving in the Vietnam War never served there. In addition, it reveals persons who were mistakenly given military awards. It won the Colby Award for military writers in 2000.

They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 is a 2004 book written by David Maraniss. The book centers around the Battle of Ong Thanh and a protest at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The Things They Carried (1990) is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. His third book about the war, it is based upon his experiences as a soldier in the 23rd Infantry Division.

Thud Ridge is a 1969 memoir by Jack Broughton about flying the F-105 "Thud" for the United States Air Force in the Vietnam War during Operation Rolling Thunder. The title Thud Ridge derives from the nickname given by F-105 pilots to the Tam Dao range, which was both a waypoint during air attacks in the vicinity of Hanoi, North Vietnam, and a terrain masking feature for ingressing fighters.

Vietnam Inc. is a photographic book produced by Philip Jones Griffiths and published in 1971 by Collier Books in New York, in both hard and soft back. It contains 266 black and white photographs most with captions, sympathetic to the civilian perspective of the South Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War.

Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War is a non-fiction book edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty. It was published in September 2019 by New Village Press and is distributed by New York University Press.

The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam is a non-fiction book by Tom Wells that was published by University of California Press on April 13, 1994. This book discusses the influence of the anti-war movement had over American policy decisions affecting the Vietnam war, proposing that the movement had a significant impact on restricting, minimizing, or ending the war."

We Were Soldiers Once… and Young is a 1992 book by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and war journalist Joseph L. Galloway about the Vietnam War. It focuses on the role of the First and Second Battalions of the 7th Cavalry Regiment in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, the United States' first large-unit battle of the Vietnam War; previous engagements involved small units and patrols. It was adapted into the 2002 film We Were Soldiers.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is a 1989 memoir by Le Ly Hayslip about her childhood during the Vietnam War, her escape to the United States, and her return to visit Vietnam 16 years later. The Oliver Stone film Heaven & Earth was based on the memoir.

When Hell Was in Session is a memoir by U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, recounting his experiences as an American prisoner of war (POW) during the Vietnam War. A Navy pilot, Denton's jet was shot down over North Vietnam in July 1965. Denton and his navigator, Bill Tschudy, parachuted down and were soon taken prisoner. Both men spent seven years and seven months in North Vietnam as often-tortured POWs. In 1979, the book was made into a television movie starring Hal Holbrook. It was adapted by screenwriter Jake Justiz, also known as Lee Pogostin.