It was 1982, fourteen years after I had last set foot in Vietnam, and thirteen years after I returned to The World. I had a family and a career. I'd never written more than an occasional letter to the editor in my life. My twisted insides had spawned ulcers. The nightmares were more frequent. I needed to get Vietnam out into the open, but I couldn't talk about it. Not after all those years. Thus begins John Ketwig's powerful memoir of the Vietnam War. Now, over 15 years after its initial publication, Sourcebooks is proud to bring ...and a hard rain fell back into print in a newly updated edition, with a new introduction by the author and eight pages of never-before-published photographs. From the country roads of upstate New York to the jungles of Vietnam, and finally to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., ...and a hard rain fell is a gripping and visceral account of one young man's struggle to make sense of his place in a world gone mad.

    This brilliantly insightful, morally devastating book tells us why he believed, how he lost faith, and what his deceptions cost five of the war's witnesses and McNamara himself.In The Living and the Dead, Paul Hendrickson juxtaposes McNamara's story with those of a wounded Marine, an Army nurse, a Vietnamese refugee, a Quaker who burned himself to death to protest the war, and an enraged artist who tried to kill the man he saw as the war's architect. The result is a book whose exhaustive research and imaginative power turn history into an act of reckoning, damning and profoundly sympathetic, impossible to put down and impossible to forget."A masterpiece. . . . [Hendrickson] has a gift with language that most writers can only dream about. " --Philadelphia Inquirer"Approaches Shakespearian tragedy." --The New York Times Book Review

    In his dispatches he focuses on the human-scale effect of the war, portraying everyone from the guys in a bomber crew to Bob Hope on his USO tour and even fighting alongside soldiers behind enemy lines. Taken together, these writings create an indelible portrait of life in wartime.

    Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy. A quarter-century later, it remains a riveting and powerful testament to one of the darkest episodes in American history.

    Men come back and spend the rest of their lives trying to find out who they are ..." - Harry Whiteside, who served with the SAS and the Royal Australian Regiment in Vietnam."Surely God weeps," an Australian soldier wrote in despair of the conflict in Vietnam.But no God intervened to shorten the years of carnage and devastation in this most controversial of wars.Seen as the last "hot" frontline of the Cold War, the ten-year struggle in the rice paddies and jungles of South Vietnam unleashed the most devastating firepower on the Vietnamese nation and visited terrible harm on civilians and soldiers.Yet the Australian forces applied tactics that were very different from those of the Americans. Guided by their commanders" experience of jungle combat, Australian troops operated with stealth, deception and restraint in pursuing a "better war".Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign.From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti-war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefield, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians" war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.More than 500 soldiers were killed and thousands wounded. Those who made it home returned to a hostile and ignorant country and a reception that scarred them forever.This is their story. Paul Ham′s Vietnam: The Australian War was awarded the Australian History Prize at the 2008 NSW Premier′s Awards. The judges praised Ham for his comprehensive approach to Australia′s involvement in the Vietnam War and his ability to communicate with both specialist and general readers. They said:′A significant number of books have appeared over the past decade or so focusing on Australia′s involvement in World War I, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars ... What distinguishes Paul Ham′s book is the comprehensive nature of its approach, which encompasses the political and military history of Australia′s involvement in Vietnam as well as the domestic social and cultural context. It is also a book that tells the human side of the war ... It is a beautifully told story of human frailty, of the shortcomings and lack of vision of those political leaders who committed Australian troops to Vietnam; and of the narrow-minded ideologies that drove some of those who opposed the war. It is a wonderful narrative, reflecting an extraordinary knowledge of the subject, which convincingly demonstrates the important role the Vietnam War played in shaping Australia′s history.′

    In a seamless narrative, Maraniss weaves together the stories of three very different worlds: the death and heroism of soldiers in Vietnam, the anger and anxiety of antiwar students back home, and the confusion and obfuscating behavior of officials in Washington. To understand what happens to the people in these interconnected stories is to understand America's anguish. Based on thousands of primary documents and 180 on-the-record interviews, the book describes the battles that evoked cultural and political conflicts that still reverberate.

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

    On January 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the sleepy Spanish farming village of Palomares during a routine airborne refueling. The explosion killed seven airmen and scattered the bomber’s payload–four unarmed thermonuclear bombs–across miles of coastline. Three of the rogue H-bombs were recovered quickly. Tracking down the fourth required the largest search-and-salvage operation in U.S. military history.Moran traces the roots of the Palomares incident, giving a brief yet in-depth history of the Strategic Air Command and its eccentric, larger-than-life commander, General Curtis LeMay, whose massive deterrence strategy kept armed U.S. bombers aloft at all times. Back on the ground, Moran recounts the myriad social and environmental effects of an accident that spread radioactive debris over hundreds of acres of Spanish farmland, alarmed America’s strategic allies, and damaged Spanish-American diplomatic relations.As the American military floundered in its attempt to keep the story secret, the events in Spain sometimes took on farcical overtones. Constant global media hype was fueled by the hit James Bond movie Thunderball, with its plot about an atomic weapon lost at sea. In addition, there were the unwanted attentions of a rusty- hulled Soviet surveillance ship and even awkward public relations stunts, complete with American diplomats in swim trunks. The Day We Lost the H-Bomb is a singular work of military history that effortlessly and dramatically captures Cold War hysteria, high-stakes negotiations, and the race to clean up a disaster of unprecedented scope. At once epic and intimate, this book recounts in stunning detail the fragile peace Americans had made with nuclear weapons–and how the specter of imminent doom forced the United States to consider not only what had happened over Palomares but what could have happened. This forgotten chapter of Cold War history will grip readers with the tension of that time and reawaken the fears and hopes of that dangerous era.

    decision-making in Vietnam-to the New York Times and Washington Post. The document set in motion a chain of events that ended not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War. In this remarkable memoir, Ellsberg describes in dramatic detail the two years he spent in Vietnam as a U.S. State Department observer, and how he came to risk his career and freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions that shaped three decades of American foreign policy. The story of one man's exploration of conscience, Secrets is also a portrait of America at a perilous crossroad.

    So begins The Dying Place, David Maurer’s unflinching look at MACV-SOG, Vietnam, and a young man’s entry into war. Fresh from the folds of the Catholic Church, Sgt. Sam Walden is quickly embraced by another religion, jungle warfare. After four years there may be no resolution between the two; God knows Sam has tried. But how many Hail Mary’s will absolve him of what he has done in Laos? Walden is a war-weary Green Beret, regularly tested beyond normal limits by the ever-changing priorities of the puzzle palace in Saigon. And yet he overcomes, staying alive to go on mission after mission with his one-one and his little people. To them he is everything – strength, compassion, courage. He will not let them down. David Maurer’s own experiences at MACV-SOG’s Command and Control North come to life in this tense action-packed story. The U.S. was not supposed to be in Laos during the Vietnam War and by all accounts, we weren’t. Some know better, and fortunately, Maurer is one of those. With a fine ear for dialogue Maurer takes you back and sets you down squarely on the LZ, where inner turmoil is quelled and external conflict takes over, if only for awhile. If you’re lucky, you just might make it out alive.

     For the next four months he spent his life on the frontline, witnessing and recording what the American men were doing, saying and thinking in the fight against the communist forces of Northern Vietnam. Tregaskis exposes the confusion of the conflict as he climbs on board Marine and Army helicopters and goes on missions to search out their deadly foes that seem to disappear into the jungle as soon as they are seen. Vietnam Diary is a remarkable book that takes the reader to the heart of what it was like to be fighting in this vicious war. Through the course of the book Tregaskis develops deep friendships with many of the troops who begin to open up to him and explain their experiences that they have been through since the beginning of the war. “He discusses in typical Tregaskis style his observations and experiences during the time he spent with the Marine and Army helicopter units, the Special Forces, the MAAG personnel, and the Junk fleet.” R. C. Rosacker, Lieutenant Colonel, U. S. Marine Corps, Naval War College Review Tregaskis won the George Polk Award for first-person reporting under hazardous conditions shortly after publishing Vietname Diary. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Vietnam War as well as the lives of the soldiers who fought within it. Richard Tregaskis was an American journalist and author who served as a war correspondent during World War Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He was no stranger to danger as he frequently put himself in the firing line to report and during the Second World War while in Italy a shell fragment pierced his helmet and his skull and nearly killed him. His book Vietnam Diary was first published in 1963 and he passed away in Hawaii in 1973.

    Dien Bien Phu was a remote valley on the border of Laos along a simple rural trade route. But it would also be where a great European power fell to an underestimated insurgent army and lost control of a crucial colony. Valley of Death is the untold story of the 1954 battle that, in six weeks, changed the course of history.A veteran of the French Army, Ted Morgan has made use of exclusive firsthand reports to create the most complete and dramatic telling of the conflict ever written. Here is the history of the Vietminh liberation movement’s rebellion against French occupation after World War II and its growth as an adversary, eventually backed by Communist China. Here too is the ill-fated French plan to build a base in Dien Bien Phu and draw the Vietminh into a debilitating defeat—which instead led to the Europeans being encircled in the surrounding hills, besieged by heavy artillery, overrun, and defeated.    Making expert use of recently unearthed or released information, Morgan reveals the inner workings of the American effort to aid France, with Eisenhower secretly disdainful of the French effort and prophetically worried that “no military victory was possible in that type of theater.” Morgan paints indelible portraits of all the major players, from Henri Navarre, head of the French Union forces, a rigid professional unprepared for an enemy fortified by rice carried on bicycles, to his commander, General Christian de Castries, a privileged, miscast cavalry officer, and General Vo Nguyen Giap, a master of guerrilla warfare working out of a one-room hut on the side of a hill. Most devastatingly, Morgan sets the stage for the Vietnam quagmire that was to come.    Superbly researched and powerfully written, Valley of Death is the crowning achievement of an author whose work has always been as compulsively readable as it is important.

    Hackworth presents a vivid and powerful portrait of a life of patriotism.From age fifteen to forty David Hackworth devoted himself to the US Army and fast became a living legend. In 1971, however, he appeared on television to decry the doomed war effort in Vietnam. With About Face, he has written what many Vietnam veterans have called the most important book of their generation.From Korea to Berlin, from the Cuban missile crisis to Vietnam, Hackworth’s story is that of an exemplary patriot, played out against the backdrop of the changing fortunes of America and the American military. It is also a stunning indictment of the Pentagon’s fundamental misunderstanding of the Vietnam conflict and of the bureaucracy of self-interest that fuelled the war.Heavily decorated Colonel Hackworth narrates his life and disillusionment during Vietnam. Orphaned before he was a year old, he found his home at 15 in the Army. In Korea, heroism gave him a battlefield commission at 20. During the Cold War, he commanded at the Berlin wall and the Cuban missile crises. But Vietnam led to disillusionment.

    Dubbed "Bitter Bierce" for his vitriolic wit and biting satire, his fame rests largely on a celebrated compilation of barbed epigrams, The Devil's Dictionary, and a book of short stories (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, 1891). Most of the 16 selections in this volume have been taken from the latter collection.The stories in this edition include: "What I Saw at Shiloh," "A Son of the Gods," "Four Days in Dixie," "One of the Missing," "A Horseman in the Sky," "The Coup de Grace," "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Story of Conscience," "One Kind of Officer," "Chickamauga," and five more.Bierce's stories employ a buildup of suggestive realistic detail to produce grim and vivid tales often disturbing in their mood of fatalism and impending calamity. Hauntingly suggestive, they offer excellent examples of the author's dark pessimism and storytelling power.--back coverContents:1 What I Saw of Shiloh2 Four Days in Dixie3 A Horseman in the Sky4 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge5 Chickamauga6 A Son of the Gods7 One of the Missing8 Killed at Resaca9 The Affair at Coulter's Notch10 The Coup de Grâce11 Parker Adderson, Philosopher12 An Affair of Outposts13 The Story of a Conscience14 One Kind of Officer15 George Thurston16 The Mocking-bird

     Free BONUS Inside! “It’s hell out there” was how one Marine described the assault on Tarawa, the U.S. Navy’s first amphibious landing in World War II’s arduous Pacific Campaign to bring the Empire of Japan to its knees. In 76 hours of fighting, the Marines lost nearly as many men as had died during the six months of the Guadalcanal campaign. Military intelligence had failed to take into account the reefs around Betio, the target of the assault, or the low tides which prevented transport vehicles from bringing the Marines safely to shore. As Marines were forced to wade 700 yards from the stranded vehicles to the shore, many of them were shot by enemy fire or drowned from the weight of their packs. When Americans back home saw the photographs of the bodies in the waters around Tarawa, they were horrified to realize that the route to Japan and victory would be strewn with the bodies of their young soldiers. Discover a plethora of topics such as The Road to Tarawa Preparing Tarawa's Defenses The First Day of the Battle Eyewitness Account of the Betio Landing The Lessons and Legacy of Tarawa And much more! So if you want a concise and informative book on the Battle of Tarawa, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button for instant access!