Peace and Conflict is a new biennial publication that provides key data and documents trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged intercountry war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 2010, Peace & Conflict adds a new regular feature-Trends in Global Terrorism-and focuses on the theme of Challenges of Post-Conflict Transitions. It covers special topics including women and post-conflict settings, and truth commissions and tribunals. Peace and Conflict is a large format, full-color reference including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts that summarize trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and the likelihood of genocide risk in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a new biennial publication that provides key data and documents trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged intercountry war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 2010, Peace & Conflict adds a new regular feature-Trends in Global Terrorism-and focuses on the theme of Challenges of Post-Conflict Transitions. It covers special topics including women and post-conflict settings, and truth commissions and tribunals. Peace and Conflict is a large format, full-color reference including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts that summarize trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and the likelihood of genocide risk in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides key data and follows trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged inter-country war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peace and Conflict 2012 focuses on the theme of policy guidance for preventing conflict. It covers special topics with original contributions that focus on mediation, economic recovery, and the impact of elections. Peace and Conflict is a large-format reference book including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with box quote extracts that summarise trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and risk of genocide in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides key data and follows trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged inter-country war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peace and Conflict 2012 focuses on the theme of policy guidance for preventing conflict. It covers special topics with original contributions that focus on mediation, economic recovery, and the impact of elections. Peace and Conflict is a large-format reference book including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with box quote extracts that summarise trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and risk of genocide in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides cutting-edge data and analysis concerning domestic and international conflicts and corresponding peacebuilding activities. The book include forecasts of risks of political and social instability, as well as trends and patterns in conflict. The 2014 edition focusses on the 'micro level' in the study of conflict and peacebuilding, such as social relationships below the level of the nation-state, with attention to key topics such as ethnicity, climate change, foreign aid and sexual violence. Peace and Conflict is a large-format, full-color resource with numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual and summary presentation of information. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts emphasizing major findings.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides cutting-edge data and analysis concerning domestic and international conflicts and corresponding peacebuilding activities. The book include forecasts of risks of political and social instability, as well as trends and patterns in conflict. The 2014 edition focusses on the 'micro level' in the study of conflict and peacebuilding, such as social relationships below the level of the nation-state, with attention to key topics such as ethnicity, climate change, foreign aid and sexual violence. Peace and Conflict is a large-format, full-color resource with numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual and summary presentation of information. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts emphasizing major findings.

The Air War in Vietnam is a deep dive into the effectiveness of air power during the Vietnam War, offering particular evaluation of the extent to which air operations fulfilled national policy objectives. Built from exhaustive research into previously classified and little-known archival sources, Michael Weaver insightfully blends new sources with material from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States Series. While Air Force sources from the lion's share of the documentary evidence, Weaver also makes heavy use of Navy and Marine materials.Breaking air power into six different mission sets--air superiority, aerial refueling, airlift, close air support, reconnaissance, and coercion & interdiction--Weaver assesses the effectiveness of each of these endeavors from the tactical level of war and adherence to US policy goals. Critically, The Air War in Vietnam perceives of the air campaign as a siege of North Vietnam.While American air forces completed most of their air campaigns successfully on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, what resulted was not a failure in air power, but a failure in the waging of war as a whole. The Air War in Vietnam tackles controversies and unearths new evidence, rendering verdicts both critical and positive, arguing that war, however it is waged, is ultimately effective only when it achieves a country's policy objectives.

By now the world knows well the exploits of World War II admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and "Bull" Halsey. These brilliant strategists and combat commanders--backed by a powerful Allied coalition, a nation united, gifted civilian leaders, and abundant war-making resources--led U.S. and allied naval forces to victory against the Axis powers.Leadership during the Vietnam War was another story.The Vietnam War and its aftermath sorely tested the professional skill of four-star admirals Harry D. Felt, Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, Thomas H. Moorer, Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., and James L. Holloway III. Unlike their World War II predecessors, these equally battle-tested leaders had to cope with a flawed American understanding of U.S. and Vietnamese Communist strengths and weaknesses, distrustful and ill-focused Washington leaders, an increasingly discontented American populace, and an ultimately failing war effort.Like millions of other Americans, these five admirals had to come to terms with America's first lost war, and what that loss meant for the future of the nation and the U.S. armed forces. The challenges were both internal and external. A destabilized U.S. Navy was troubled by racial discord, drug abuse, anti-war and anti-establishment sentiment, and a host of personnel and material ills. At the same time, increasingly serious global threats to US interests, such as the rise of Soviet nuclear-missile and naval power, were shaping confrontations on the postwar stage. Critical to the story is how these naval leaders managed their relationships with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and Secretaries of Defense McNamara, Laird, and Schlesinger.Based on prodigious research into many formerly classified sources, Edward J. Marolda relates in dramatic detail how America's top naval leaders tackled their responsibilities, their successes, and their failures. This is a story of dedication to duty, professionalism, and service by America's top admirals during a time of great national and international adversity.

On the evening of July 11, 1967, a Navy surveillance aircraft spotted a suspicious trawler in international waters heading toward the Quang Ngai coast of South Vietnam. While the ship tried to appear innocuous on its deck, Saigon quickly identified it as an enemy gunrunner, codenamed Skunk Alpha. A four-seaborne intercept task force was established and formed a barrier inside South Vietnam’s twelve-mile territorial boundary. As the enemy ship ignored all orders to surrender and neared the Sa Ky River at the tip of the Batangan Peninsula, Swift Boat PCF-79 was ordered to take the trawler under fire. What followed was ship-to-ship combat action not seen since World War II. Capturing Skunk Alpha relates that breathtaking military encounter to readers for the first time. But Capturing Skunk Alpha is also the tale of one sailor’s journey to the deck of PCF-79. Two years earlier, Raúl Herrera was growing up on the west side of San Antonio, Texas, when he answered the call to duty and joined the US Navy. Raúl was assigned to PCF Crew Training and joined a ragtag six-man Swift Boat crew with a mission to prevent the infiltration of resupply ships from North Vietnam. The brave sailors who steered into harm’s way in war-torn Vietnam would keep more than ninety tons of ammunition and supplies from the Viet Cong and NVA forces. The Viet Cong would post a bounty on PCF-79; Premier Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and Chief of State Nguyễn Văn Thiệu would congratulate and decorate them for their heroism. Capturing Skunk Alpha provides an eyewitness account of a pivotal moment in Navy operations while also chronicling one sailor’s unlikely journey from barrio adolescence to perilous combat action on the high seas.

The conflict in Vietnam has been rewritten and reframed into many corners of American life and has long shadowed contemporary political science and foreign policy. The war and its aftermath have engendered award-winning films and books. It has held up a mirror to the twentieth century and to the wars of the twenty-first.Set in wartime Vietnam and contemporary Vietnam, in wartime America and in America today, the stories that comprise Memorial Days were written from 1973 to the present. As our continuing reappraisals of the war’s shadow have unspooled over the last half-decade, so too has Wayne Karlin returned to the subject in his fiction, collected and published together here for the first time.A girl in Maryland runs away from Civil War reenactors she imagines to be American soldiers in Vietnam, while a woman in Vietnam hides in the jungle from an American helicopter and another tries to bury the relics of the war. A man mourns a friend lost in Iraq while a helicopter crewman in Quang Tri loads the broken and dead into his aircraft. Extras playing soldiers in a war film in present-day Vietnam model themselves after other war films while a Marine in a war sees himself as a movie character. A snake coiled around the collective control of a helicopter in Vietnam uncoils in a soldier come home from Iraq. The chronology is the chronology of dreams or nightmares or triggered flashbacks: images and incidents triggering other images and incidents in a sequence that seems to make no sense—which is exactly the sense it makes.Some stories burn with the fresh experiences of a Marine witnessing war firsthand. Some stories radiate a long-abiding grief. All the stories reflect and reconfigure the Vietnam War as it echoes into the present century, under the light of retrospection.

By now the world knows well the exploits of World War II admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and "Bull" Halsey. These brilliant strategists and combat commanders--backed by a powerful Allied coalition, a nation united, gifted civilian leaders, and abundant war-making resources--led U.S. and allied naval forces to victory against the Axis powers.Leadership during the Vietnam War was another story.The Vietnam War and its aftermath sorely tested the professional skill of four-star admirals Harry D. Felt, Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, Thomas H. Moorer, Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., and James L. Holloway III. Unlike their World War II predecessors, these equally battle-tested leaders had to cope with a flawed American understanding of U.S. and Vietnamese Communist strengths and weaknesses, distrustful and ill-focused Washington leaders, an increasingly discontented American populace, and an ultimately failing war effort.Like millions of other Americans, these five admirals had to come to terms with America's first lost war, and what that loss meant for the future of the nation and the U.S. armed forces. The challenges were both internal and external. A destabilized U.S. Navy was troubled by racial discord, drug abuse, anti-war and anti-establishment sentiment, and a host of personnel and material ills. At the same time, increasingly serious global threats to US interests, such as the rise of Soviet nuclear-missile and naval power, were shaping confrontations on the postwar stage. Critical to the story is how these naval leaders managed their relationships with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and Secretaries of Defense McNamara, Laird, and Schlesinger.Based on prodigious research into many formerly classified sources, Edward J. Marolda relates in dramatic detail how America's top naval leaders tackled their responsibilities, their successes, and their failures. This is a story of dedication to duty, professionalism, and service by America's top admirals during a time of great national and international adversity.

The Air War in Vietnam is a deep dive into the effectiveness of air power during the Vietnam War, offering particular evaluation of the extent to which air operations fulfilled national policy objectives. Built from exhaustive research into previously classified and little-known archival sources, Michael Weaver insightfully blends new sources with material from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States Series. While Air Force sources form the lion's share of the documentary evidence, Weaver also makes heavy use of Navy and Marine materials.Breaking air power into six different mission sets--air superiority, aerial refueling, airlift, close air support, reconnaissance, and coercion & interdiction--Weaver assesses the effectiveness of each of these endeavors from the tactical level of war and adherence to US policy goals. Critically, The Air War in Vietnam perceives of the air campaign as a siege of North Vietnam.While American air forces completed most of their air campaigns successfully on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, what resulted was not a failure in air power, but a failure in the waging of war as a whole. The Air War in Vietnam tackles controversies and unearths new evidence, rendering verdicts both critical and positive, arguing that war, however it is waged, is ultimately effective only when it achieves a country's policy objectives.

No other Vietnamese family in modern time had such an intense involvement in high politics and public affairs as the Ngô-Đìnhs. Through the tenure of President Ngô-Đình Diệm of the Republic of Vietnam (1955–1963), this family helped shape Vietnamese history in numerous ways. President Diệm’s rule in South Vietnam was perceived by many to be authoritarian and nepotistic, but it is important for historians in general and for anyone interested in Vietnamese history in particular to learn more about his family members who played such important roles in his government. How did they see themselves, their country, and their compatriots? How did each member of the family think of others? How did they view the family’s role in history? Sixty years after the death Ngô-Đình Nhu, English-language readers can now learn about Madame Ngô-Đình Nhu’s life from her own words and recollections. Of all the Ngô-Đìnhs, Madame Ngô-Đình Nhu (Trần Lệ Xuân) was perhaps the most controversial figure. In this posthumous memoir translated from French,Madame Nhu narrates important events in her life, from her childhood to her marriage to Mr. Nhu, from her time in Huế during the Franco-Vietnamese war to the happy years of the Diệm government, and from her forced exile to the last days of her life. A complex individual and a strong-willed woman who refused to accept the terrible hands fate dealt her, Madame Nhu bared her pains, lamented the plight of Vietnam, and railed against the foreign powers that meddled in Vietnamese affairs. In an essay accompanying their mother’s narrative in The White Pebble, the late Ngô-Đình Lệ Quyên and Ngô-Đình Quỳnh (along with Jacqueline Willemetz) join their mother to defend the integrity of the Diệm government and the Ngô-Đình family against their critics. By telling the family’s history alongside that of the Vietnamese nation, Ngô-Đình Nhu’s children wanted to demonstrate the sincerity and depth of patriotism in the family.This book not only provides a unique account of Madame Nhu and the Ngô-Đình family by its members but also illuminates politics in Republican Vietnam and its troubled relationship with the United States.

Journalist Keyes Beech was sometimes accused of being a war lover. He denied the charge. Wars, he said, just kept happening on his watch. "You may hope that they'll go out of fashion, but you can't just ignore them." His accusers weren't entirely wrong, however. Even friends acknowledged that he liked to be where the action was. Keyes Beech saw a lot of action.He saw the flag raised on Iwo Jima in World War II; followed the first bloody year of the war in Korea; witnessed the defeat of the French in what was then Indochina; and covered the long, drawn-out saga of the American war in Vietnam. Beech was on one of the last helicopters to lift off from the United States embassy in Saigon in April 1975.He was a Tennessee-born farm boy who rose from hardscrabble beginnings to become a Pulitzer Prize–winning correspondent whose reports were syndicated in more than seventy newspapers across the country. In describing Beech's life, Jonathan Webb traces the arc of a nation that moved from unity and moral clarity during World War II to the division and doubt of Vietnam — a transformation that left Beech as the voice of a disillusioned Middle America that was never reconciled with the war's bitter end. Webb's biography of Keyes Beech is not only a portrait of a man shaped by war but also a study of America's own reckoning with its changing role in the world.

An authoritative source of information on violent conflicts and peacebuilding processes around the world, Peace and Conflict is an annual publication of the University of Maryland’s Center for International Development and Conflict Management and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva).The contents of the 2016 edition are divided into three sections:» Global Patterns and Trends provides an overview of recent advances in scholarly research on various aspects of conflict and peace, as well as chapters on armed conflict, violence against civilians, non-state armed actors, democracy and ethnic exclusion, terrorism, defense spending and arms production and procurement, peace agreements, state repression, foreign aid, and the results of the Peace & Conflict Instability Ledger, which ranks the status and progress of more than 160 countries based on their forecasted risk of future instability.» Special Feature spotlights work on measuring micro-level welfare effects of exposure to conflict. » Profiles has been enlarged to survey developments in instances of civil wars, peacekeeping missions, and international criminal justice proceedings that were active around the world during 2014.Frequent visualizations of data in full-color, large-format tables, graphs, and maps bring the analysis to life and amplify crucial developments in real-world events and the latest findings in research.The contributors include many leading scholars in the field from the US and Europe.

Peace and Conflict is a new biennial publication that provides key data and documents trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged intercountry war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 2010, Peace & Conflict adds a new regular feature-Trends in Global Terrorism-and focuses on the theme of Challenges of Post-Conflict Transitions. It covers special topics including women and post-conflict settings, and truth commissions and tribunals. Peace and Conflict is a large format, full-color reference including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts that summarize trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and the likelihood of genocide risk in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a new biennial publication that provides key data and documents trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged intercountry war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 2010, Peace & Conflict adds a new regular feature-Trends in Global Terrorism-and focuses on the theme of Challenges of Post-Conflict Transitions. It covers special topics including women and post-conflict settings, and truth commissions and tribunals. Peace and Conflict is a large format, full-color reference including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts that summarize trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and the likelihood of genocide risk in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides key data and follows trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged inter-country war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peace and Conflict 2012 focuses on the theme of policy guidance for preventing conflict. It covers special topics with original contributions that focus on mediation, economic recovery, and the impact of elections. Peace and Conflict is a large-format reference book including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with box quote extracts that summarise trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and risk of genocide in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides key data and follows trends in national and international conflicts ranging from isolated acts of terrorism to internal civil strife to full-fledged inter-country war. A major trend it tracks is the incidence of wars beyond the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peace and Conflict 2012 focuses on the theme of policy guidance for preventing conflict. It covers special topics with original contributions that focus on mediation, economic recovery, and the impact of elections. Peace and Conflict is a large-format reference book including numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual presentation of data. Crisp narratives are highlighted with box quote extracts that summarise trends and major findings such as the continuing increase in high casualty terrorist acts and risk of genocide in certain areas.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides cutting-edge data and analysis concerning domestic and international conflicts and corresponding peacebuilding activities. The book include forecasts of risks of political and social instability, as well as trends and patterns in conflict. The 2014 edition focusses on the 'micro level' in the study of conflict and peacebuilding, such as social relationships below the level of the nation-state, with attention to key topics such as ethnicity, climate change, foreign aid and sexual violence. Peace and Conflict is a large-format, full-color resource with numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual and summary presentation of information. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts emphasizing major findings.

Peace and Conflict is a biennial publication that provides cutting-edge data and analysis concerning domestic and international conflicts and corresponding peacebuilding activities. The book include forecasts of risks of political and social instability, as well as trends and patterns in conflict. The 2014 edition focusses on the 'micro level' in the study of conflict and peacebuilding, such as social relationships below the level of the nation-state, with attention to key topics such as ethnicity, climate change, foreign aid and sexual violence. Peace and Conflict is a large-format, full-color resource with numerous graphs, tables, maps, and appendices dedicated to the visual and summary presentation of information. Crisp narratives are highlighted with pull-quote extracts emphasizing major findings.

The Air War in Vietnam is a deep dive into the effectiveness of air power during the Vietnam War, offering particular evaluation of the extent to which air operations fulfilled national policy objectives. Built from exhaustive research into previously classified and little-known archival sources, Michael Weaver insightfully blends new sources with material from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States Series. While Air Force sources from the lion's share of the documentary evidence, Weaver also makes heavy use of Navy and Marine materials.Breaking air power into six different mission sets--air superiority, aerial refueling, airlift, close air support, reconnaissance, and coercion & interdiction--Weaver assesses the effectiveness of each of these endeavors from the tactical level of war and adherence to US policy goals. Critically, The Air War in Vietnam perceives of the air campaign as a siege of North Vietnam.While American air forces completed most of their air campaigns successfully on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, what resulted was not a failure in air power, but a failure in the waging of war as a whole. The Air War in Vietnam tackles controversies and unearths new evidence, rendering verdicts both critical and positive, arguing that war, however it is waged, is ultimately effective only when it achieves a country's policy objectives.

By now the world knows well the exploits of World War II admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and "Bull" Halsey. These brilliant strategists and combat commanders--backed by a powerful Allied coalition, a nation united, gifted civilian leaders, and abundant war-making resources--led U.S. and allied naval forces to victory against the Axis powers.Leadership during the Vietnam War was another story.The Vietnam War and its aftermath sorely tested the professional skill of four-star admirals Harry D. Felt, Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, Thomas H. Moorer, Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., and James L. Holloway III. Unlike their World War II predecessors, these equally battle-tested leaders had to cope with a flawed American understanding of U.S. and Vietnamese Communist strengths and weaknesses, distrustful and ill-focused Washington leaders, an increasingly discontented American populace, and an ultimately failing war effort.Like millions of other Americans, these five admirals had to come to terms with America's first lost war, and what that loss meant for the future of the nation and the U.S. armed forces. The challenges were both internal and external. A destabilized U.S. Navy was troubled by racial discord, drug abuse, anti-war and anti-establishment sentiment, and a host of personnel and material ills. At the same time, increasingly serious global threats to US interests, such as the rise of Soviet nuclear-missile and naval power, were shaping confrontations on the postwar stage. Critical to the story is how these naval leaders managed their relationships with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and Secretaries of Defense McNamara, Laird, and Schlesinger.Based on prodigious research into many formerly classified sources, Edward J. Marolda relates in dramatic detail how America's top naval leaders tackled their responsibilities, their successes, and their failures. This is a story of dedication to duty, professionalism, and service by America's top admirals during a time of great national and international adversity.

On the evening of July 11, 1967, a Navy surveillance aircraft spotted a suspicious trawler in international waters heading toward the Quang Ngai coast of South Vietnam. While the ship tried to appear innocuous on its deck, Saigon quickly identified it as an enemy gunrunner, codenamed Skunk Alpha. A four-seaborne intercept task force was established and formed a barrier inside South Vietnam’s twelve-mile territorial boundary. As the enemy ship ignored all orders to surrender and neared the Sa Ky River at the tip of the Batangan Peninsula, Swift Boat PCF-79 was ordered to take the trawler under fire. What followed was ship-to-ship combat action not seen since World War II. Capturing Skunk Alpha relates that breathtaking military encounter to readers for the first time. But Capturing Skunk Alpha is also the tale of one sailor’s journey to the deck of PCF-79. Two years earlier, Raúl Herrera was growing up on the west side of San Antonio, Texas, when he answered the call to duty and joined the US Navy. Raúl was assigned to PCF Crew Training and joined a ragtag six-man Swift Boat crew with a mission to prevent the infiltration of resupply ships from North Vietnam. The brave sailors who steered into harm’s way in war-torn Vietnam would keep more than ninety tons of ammunition and supplies from the Viet Cong and NVA forces. The Viet Cong would post a bounty on PCF-79; Premier Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and Chief of State Nguyễn Văn Thiệu would congratulate and decorate them for their heroism. Capturing Skunk Alpha provides an eyewitness account of a pivotal moment in Navy operations while also chronicling one sailor’s unlikely journey from barrio adolescence to perilous combat action on the high seas.

The conflict in Vietnam has been rewritten and reframed into many corners of American life and has long shadowed contemporary political science and foreign policy. The war and its aftermath have engendered award-winning films and books. It has held up a mirror to the twentieth century and to the wars of the twenty-first.Set in wartime Vietnam and contemporary Vietnam, in wartime America and in America today, the stories that comprise Memorial Days were written from 1973 to the present. As our continuing reappraisals of the war’s shadow have unspooled over the last half-decade, so too has Wayne Karlin returned to the subject in his fiction, collected and published together here for the first time.A girl in Maryland runs away from Civil War reenactors she imagines to be American soldiers in Vietnam, while a woman in Vietnam hides in the jungle from an American helicopter and another tries to bury the relics of the war. A man mourns a friend lost in Iraq while a helicopter crewman in Quang Tri loads the broken and dead into his aircraft. Extras playing soldiers in a war film in present-day Vietnam model themselves after other war films while a Marine in a war sees himself as a movie character. A snake coiled around the collective control of a helicopter in Vietnam uncoils in a soldier come home from Iraq. The chronology is the chronology of dreams or nightmares or triggered flashbacks: images and incidents triggering other images and incidents in a sequence that seems to make no sense—which is exactly the sense it makes.Some stories burn with the fresh experiences of a Marine witnessing war firsthand. Some stories radiate a long-abiding grief. All the stories reflect and reconfigure the Vietnam War as it echoes into the present century, under the light of retrospection.

By now the world knows well the exploits of World War II admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and "Bull" Halsey. These brilliant strategists and combat commanders--backed by a powerful Allied coalition, a nation united, gifted civilian leaders, and abundant war-making resources--led U.S. and allied naval forces to victory against the Axis powers.Leadership during the Vietnam War was another story.The Vietnam War and its aftermath sorely tested the professional skill of four-star admirals Harry D. Felt, Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, Thomas H. Moorer, Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., and James L. Holloway III. Unlike their World War II predecessors, these equally battle-tested leaders had to cope with a flawed American understanding of U.S. and Vietnamese Communist strengths and weaknesses, distrustful and ill-focused Washington leaders, an increasingly discontented American populace, and an ultimately failing war effort.Like millions of other Americans, these five admirals had to come to terms with America's first lost war, and what that loss meant for the future of the nation and the U.S. armed forces. The challenges were both internal and external. A destabilized U.S. Navy was troubled by racial discord, drug abuse, anti-war and anti-establishment sentiment, and a host of personnel and material ills. At the same time, increasingly serious global threats to US interests, such as the rise of Soviet nuclear-missile and naval power, were shaping confrontations on the postwar stage. Critical to the story is how these naval leaders managed their relationships with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and Secretaries of Defense McNamara, Laird, and Schlesinger.Based on prodigious research into many formerly classified sources, Edward J. Marolda relates in dramatic detail how America's top naval leaders tackled their responsibilities, their successes, and their failures. This is a story of dedication to duty, professionalism, and service by America's top admirals during a time of great national and international adversity.

The Air War in Vietnam is a deep dive into the effectiveness of air power during the Vietnam War, offering particular evaluation of the extent to which air operations fulfilled national policy objectives. Built from exhaustive research into previously classified and little-known archival sources, Michael Weaver insightfully blends new sources with material from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States Series. While Air Force sources form the lion's share of the documentary evidence, Weaver also makes heavy use of Navy and Marine materials.Breaking air power into six different mission sets--air superiority, aerial refueling, airlift, close air support, reconnaissance, and coercion & interdiction--Weaver assesses the effectiveness of each of these endeavors from the tactical level of war and adherence to US policy goals. Critically, The Air War in Vietnam perceives of the air campaign as a siege of North Vietnam.While American air forces completed most of their air campaigns successfully on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels, what resulted was not a failure in air power, but a failure in the waging of war as a whole. The Air War in Vietnam tackles controversies and unearths new evidence, rendering verdicts both critical and positive, arguing that war, however it is waged, is ultimately effective only when it achieves a country's policy objectives.

No other Vietnamese family in modern time had such an intense involvement in high politics and public affairs as the Ngô-Đìnhs. Through the tenure of President Ngô-Đình Diệm of the Republic of Vietnam (1955–1963), this family helped shape Vietnamese history in numerous ways. President Diệm’s rule in South Vietnam was perceived by many to be authoritarian and nepotistic, but it is important for historians in general and for anyone interested in Vietnamese history in particular to learn more about his family members who played such important roles in his government. How did they see themselves, their country, and their compatriots? How did each member of the family think of others? How did they view the family’s role in history? Sixty years after the death Ngô-Đình Nhu, English-language readers can now learn about Madame Ngô-Đình Nhu’s life from her own words and recollections. Of all the Ngô-Đìnhs, Madame Ngô-Đình Nhu (Trần Lệ Xuân) was perhaps the most controversial figure. In this posthumous memoir translated from French,Madame Nhu narrates important events in her life, from her childhood to her marriage to Mr. Nhu, from her time in Huế during the Franco-Vietnamese war to the happy years of the Diệm government, and from her forced exile to the last days of her life. A complex individual and a strong-willed woman who refused to accept the terrible hands fate dealt her, Madame Nhu bared her pains, lamented the plight of Vietnam, and railed against the foreign powers that meddled in Vietnamese affairs. In an essay accompanying their mother’s narrative in The White Pebble, the late Ngô-Đình Lệ Quyên and Ngô-Đình Quỳnh (along with Jacqueline Willemetz) join their mother to defend the integrity of the Diệm government and the Ngô-Đình family against their critics. By telling the family’s history alongside that of the Vietnamese nation, Ngô-Đình Nhu’s children wanted to demonstrate the sincerity and depth of patriotism in the family.This book not only provides a unique account of Madame Nhu and the Ngô-Đình family by its members but also illuminates politics in Republican Vietnam and its troubled relationship with the United States.

Journalist Keyes Beech was sometimes accused of being a war lover. He denied the charge. Wars, he said, just kept happening on his watch. "You may hope that they'll go out of fashion, but you can't just ignore them." His accusers weren't entirely wrong, however. Even friends acknowledged that he liked to be where the action was. Keyes Beech saw a lot of action.He saw the flag raised on Iwo Jima in World War II; followed the first bloody year of the war in Korea; witnessed the defeat of the French in what was then Indochina; and covered the long, drawn-out saga of the American war in Vietnam. Beech was on one of the last helicopters to lift off from the United States embassy in Saigon in April 1975.He was a Tennessee-born farm boy who rose from hardscrabble beginnings to become a Pulitzer Prize–winning correspondent whose reports were syndicated in more than seventy newspapers across the country. In describing Beech's life, Jonathan Webb traces the arc of a nation that moved from unity and moral clarity during World War II to the division and doubt of Vietnam — a transformation that left Beech as the voice of a disillusioned Middle America that was never reconciled with the war's bitter end. Webb's biography of Keyes Beech is not only a portrait of a man shaped by war but also a study of America's own reckoning with its changing role in the world.

An authoritative source of information on violent conflicts and peacebuilding processes around the world, Peace and Conflict is an annual publication of the University of Maryland’s Center for International Development and Conflict Management and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva).The contents of the 2016 edition are divided into three sections:» Global Patterns and Trends provides an overview of recent advances in scholarly research on various aspects of conflict and peace, as well as chapters on armed conflict, violence against civilians, non-state armed actors, democracy and ethnic exclusion, terrorism, defense spending and arms production and procurement, peace agreements, state repression, foreign aid, and the results of the Peace & Conflict Instability Ledger, which ranks the status and progress of more than 160 countries based on their forecasted risk of future instability.» Special Feature spotlights work on measuring micro-level welfare effects of exposure to conflict. » Profiles has been enlarged to survey developments in instances of civil wars, peacekeeping missions, and international criminal justice proceedings that were active around the world during 2014.Frequent visualizations of data in full-color, large-format tables, graphs, and maps bring the analysis to life and amplify crucial developments in real-world events and the latest findings in research.The contributors include many leading scholars in the field from the US and Europe.