To Find Out More

Ronald Spector feels that many of the best books on the Vietnam War are not general accounts but memoirs, diaries, and monographs about some specific aspect of the fighting. But for those who want a general picture, he says that the two best so far are Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History and George C. Herring’s America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam . The last three years of the war are best described in Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia , by Arnold R. Isaacs. “In my own book Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960 ” Spector says, “I give a detailed account of the earliest years, the 1940s and 1950s.”