His job was to find the enmy, observe him, or kill him--all the while behind enemy lines, where success could be as dangerous as discovery.

    This is the gripping account of brave men whose stories of heroism have never been told.

    It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America’s giant military bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to neverbefore-seen documents―including long-hidden love letters―Boot recasts this cautionary American story, tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish “T. E. Lawrence of Asia” from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the humiliating American evacuation in 1975. Bringing a tragic complexity to this so-called “ugly American,” this “engrossing biography” (Karl Marlantes) rescues Lansdale from historical ignominy and suggests that Vietnam could have been different had we only listened. With reverberations that continue to play out in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken is a biography of profound historical consequence.

    The LRRPs--Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols--were that new breed of fighting man. They operated in six-man teams deep within enemy territory, and were the eyes and ears of the units they served. This is their story--of perseverence under extreme hardship and uncommon bravery--and how they carried out the war's most hazardous missions.

    The Rakkasans, the 3/187th, are the most highly decorated unit in the history of the United States Army, and two of those decorations were awarded for these two battles. This vivid account of the author's first seven months in Vietnam gives special attention to the events at Dong Ap Bia, following the ­hard-­hit 3/187th hour by hour through its repeated assaults on the mountain, against an unseen enemy in an ideal defensive position. It also corrects several errors that have persisted in histories and official reports of the battle. Beyond describing his own experiences and reactions, the author writes, "I want to convey the real face of war, both its mindless carnage and its nobility of spirit. Above all, I want to convey what happened to both the casual reader and the military historian and make them aware of the extraordinary spirit of the men of First Platoon, Bravo Company. They were ordinary men doing extraordinary things."

    Col. Robert K. Brown, Editor and Publisher, Soldier of Fortune“Morris captures the historical accuracy of Special Operations in the language learned from firsthand experience.”–Lt. Col. Chuck Allen, Commander, Project Delta“War Story is the lore of Special Forces in Vietnam told in the tradition of Woody Guthrie.”–Al Santoli, author of Everything We Had“Jim Morris is a highly decorated Green Beret combat veteran, with a unique talent for making his readers feel a part of his gripping, action-packed personal experiences. Morris commands your attention as a reader with the same authority and ability with which he commanded troops in combat.”–J.C. Pollock, author of Mission M.I.A.Jim Morris was an educated young man who had always wanted to be a soldier. In 1963, he found the perfect war..."The war was like a great puzzle, great to think about, great to plan, great to do. It was so incredibly peaceful out there in the jungle."As an advisor to a Montagnard strike force, Morris and his guerrillas outfought and outmaneuvered the Viet Cong in his sector. To a Green Beret like Jim Morris, the “Yards” were brothers—so fiercely insular, they would serve no outsider and made the Berets who fought with them honorary members of the tribe…so valiant, they would follow the right man into a firestorm…But while he loved the ambushes, the firefights and the Montagnards, he could see a tragedy unfolding in Vietnam."As I jumped I heard a crack and felt a thud in my right shoulder. I squeezed the trigger on my M-16. The bolt went ka-schlugg and that was that, baby. Jammed again."In the most widely admired Special Forces memoir to come out of the Vietnam War, Jim Morris tells his story: of the early days and the Tet Offensive in '68, of the slaughters and the beauty, of the violence, the courage, the loyalty and the loss..."The war was my life and I identified with it totally. To end it was to end me, and that I would not do..."About the AuthorJim Morris served three tours with Special Forces (The Green Berets) in Vietnam. The second and third were cut short by serious wounds. He retired from his wounds as a major. He has maintained his interest in the mountain peoples of Vietnam with whom he fought, and has been, for many years, a civil rights activist on their behalf. His Vietnam memoir War Story won the first Bernal Diaz Award for military nonfiction. Morris is author of the story from which the film Operation Dumbo Drop was made, and has produced numerous documentary television episodes about the Vietnam War. He is author of three books of nonfiction and four novels.

    Taylor Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real, but entirely surreal nightmare. Now after more than fifty years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit and often horrific detail and with a reverent honor for those Marines who did not live to tell the tale.Taylor reveals what it truly means to walk the path of a warrior, to sacrifice, and to live a lifetime with the memories of a war—seeking answers to the question, “Was it worth it?"

    He was judged by his colleagues to be the best television reporter of the war, however, the traumatic stories Laurence covered became a personal burden that he carried long after the war was over. In this evocative, unflinching memoir, laced with humor, anger, love, and the unforgettable story of Mé a cat rescued from the battle of Hue, Laurence recalls coming of age during the war years as a journalist and as a man. Along the way, he clarifies the murky history of the war and the role that journalists played in altering its course.The Cat from Huéi> has earned passionate acclaim from many of the most renowned journalists and writers about the war, as well as from military officers and war veterans, book reviewers, and readers. This book will stand with Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, and Neil Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie as one of the best books ever written about Vietnam-and about war generally.

    More than 60 Army and Marine Corps infantrymen speak of their experiences during their year-long tours of duty.

    Cunning. Ferocious. Fearless. The Indochinese tiger is just one of the formidable predators roaming Vietnam's jungle. In 1966 a small band of US Special Forces soldiers--most especially Bennie Adkins--spent four grueling days facing down the "tiger" among them.While the rain and mist of an early March moved over the valley, then-Sergeant First Class Bennie Adkins and sixteen other Green Berets found themselves holed up in an undermanned and unfortified position at Camp A Shau, a small training and reconnaissance camp located right next to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam's major supply route. And with the rain came the North Vietnamese Army in force.Surrounded 10-to-1, the Green Berets endured constant mortar and rifle fire, direct assaults, treasonous allies, and volatile jungle weather. But there was one among them who battled ferociously, like a tiger, and when they finally evacuated, he carried the wounded to safety. Forty-eight years later, Command Sergeant Major Bennie Adkins's valor was recognized when he received this nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor.Filled with the sights, smells, and sounds of a raging battle fought in the middle of a tropical forest, A Tiger among Us is a riveting tale of bravery, valor, skill, and resilience.

    His images, published in Life magazine, brought the war home, scorching the consciousness of the public and inspiring much of the anti-war sentiment that convulsed American society in the 1960s. To see these photo essays today, gathered in one volume and augmented by unpublished images from the Burrows archive, is to experience (or to relive), with extraordinary immediacy, both the war itself and the effect and range of Larry Burrows’s gifts—his courage: to shoot “The Air War,” he strapped himself and his camera to the open doorway of a plane . . . his reporter’s instinct: accompanying the mission of the helicopter Yankee Papa 13, he captured the transformation of a young marine crew chief experiencing the death of fellow marines . . . and his compassion: in “Operation Prairie” and “A Degree of Disillusion” he published profoundly affecting images of exhausted, bloodied troops and maimed Vietnamese children, both wounded, physically and psychologically, by the ever-escalating war.The photographs Larry Burrows took in Vietnam, magnificently reproduced in this volume, are brutal, poignant, and utterly truthful, a stunning example of photojournalism that recorded history and achieved the level of great art. Indeed, in retrospect, says David Halberstam in his moving introduction, “Larry Burrows was as much historian as photographer and artist. Because of his work, generations born long after he died will be able to witness and understand and feel the terrible events he recorded. This book is his last testament.”With 150 illustrations, 100 in full color

    For a few years in the early 1960s the CIA seemed to be running a perfect covert war in Laos - quiet, inexpensive, just enough arms to help Meo tribesmen defend their home territory from the Communist Pathet Lao. Then the big American war next door in Vietnam spilled across the border. How the perfect covert war ballooned into sorrow and disaster is the story Roger Warner tell in Shooting at the Moon, awarded the Cornelius Ryan Award for 1995's Best Book on Foreign Affairs by the Overseas Press Club.Warner describes his characters with a novelist's touch - soldiers and diplomats busy with war-making; CIA field officers from bareknuckle warriors to the quiet men pulling strings in the shadows; and above all the Meo as they realized they had been led down the garden path.This is a book about war, about secrecy, and its illusions, about the cruel sacrifice of small countries for the convenience of large ones. Nothing better has been written about the CIA in the years when it thought a handful of Americans in sunglasses could do anything with planeloads of arms and money to burn.

    Free of ideological bias, profound in its undertsanding, and compassionate in its human portrayals, it is filled with fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with participants-French, American, Vietnamese, Chinese: diplomats, military commanders, high government officials, journalists, nurses, workers, and soldiers. Originally published a companion to the Emmy-winning PBS series, Karnow’s defining book is a precursor to Ken Burns’s ten-part forthcoming documentary series, The Vietnam War. Vietnam: A History puts events and decisions into such sharp focus that we come to understand – and make peace with – a convulsive epoch of our recent history.

    A field adviser to the army when US involvement was just beginning, he quickly became appalled at the corruption of the S. Vietnamese regime, their incompetence in fighting the Communists & their brutal alienation of their own people. Finding his superiors too blinded by political lies to understand the war was being thrown away, he secretly briefed reporters on what was really happening. One of those reporters was Neil Sheehan.--Amazon (edited) Neil Sheehan was a Vietnam War correspondent for United Press International & the NY Times & won a number of awards for reporting. In 1971 he obtained the Pentagon Papers, which brought the Times the Pulitzer gold medal for meritorious public service. A Bright Shining Lie won the National Book Award & the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction. He lives in Washington DC.MapsThe funeral Going to war Antecedents to a confrontation The Battle of Ap Bac Taking on the system Antecedents to the man A second time aroundJohn Vann staysAcknowledgmentsInterviewsDocumentsSource NotesBibliographyIndexAbout the Author

    In this game there’s no second place, only the quick and the dead.”   In Vietnam, Mobile Guerrilla Force conducted unconventional operations against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Armed with silencer-equipped MK-II British Sten guns, M-16s, M-79s, and M-60 machine guns, the men of the Mobile Guerrilla Force operated in the steamy, triple-canopy jungle owned by the NVA and VC, destroying base camps, ambushing patrols, and gathering the intelligence that General Westmoreland desperately needed.   In 1967, James Donahue was a Special Forces medic and assistant platoon leader assigned to the Mobile Guerrilla Force and their fiercely anti-Communist Cambodian freedom fighters. Their mission: to locate the 271st Main Force Viet Cong Regiment so they could be engaged and destroyed by the 1st Infantry Division.   Now, with the brutal, unflinching honesty only an eye witness could possess, Donahue relives the adrenaline rush of firefights, air strikes, human wave attacks, ambushes, and attacks on enemy base camps. Following the operation the surviving Special Forces members of the Mobile Guerrilla Force were decorated by Major General John Hay, Commanding General, 1st Infantry Division.From the Paperback edition.