Half title -- Series Page -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction -- List of Abbreviations -- Part I: Historical Narrative -- Chapter 1. Studying the Vietnam War -- Chapter 2. Vietnam: Historical Background -- Roots of the Vietnamese Culture and State -- The Impact of French Colonialism -- The Rise of Vietnamese Nationalism -- The Origins of Vietnamese Communism -- Chapter 3. United States: Historical Background -- Idealism and Realism in U.S. Foreign Policy -- The United States and the Open Door in Asia -- The World Wars: The Legacies of Wilson and Munich -- The Origins of the Cold War -- Chapter 4. The French War in Vietnam -- The August Revolution -- Outbreak of the Franco-Vietminh War -- U.S. Support of France in Indochina -- Dienbienphu and the Geneva Conference -- Chapter 5. The Diem Years: Eisenhower -- The Decision to Back Ngo Dinh Diem -- The Non-election of 1956 -- The Illusion of Nation Building -- NLF: Rise of the Southern Insurgency -- Chapter 6. The Diem Years: Kennedy -- Counterinsurgency Warfare -- The Buddhist Crisis -- The Diem Assassination -- What If Kennedy Had Lived? -- Chapter 7. The American War in Vietnam: Escalation -- The Gulf of Tonkin Incident -- Rolling Thunder -- Johnson Decides on a Land War in Asia -- Theories of Causation -- Chapter 8. The American War in Vietnam: Strategy -- The Draft -- Attrition Strategy and Body Count -- Humpin' It: The American Soldier -- The Air War -- Diplomacy -- The Resilient Enemy -- Chapter 9. The American War in Vietnam: The Limits of Power -- The Tet Offensive -- The Antiwar Movement and the Media -- Johnson's Decision to Stop Escalation -- The Presidential Election of 1968 -- Chapter 10. The American War in Vietnam: De-escalation -- Vietnamization and More Bombing -- Cambodia and Kent State -- Negotiations and the Paris Peace Accords -- DRV Victory in 1975.

Chapter 11. The War That Will Not Go Away -- The Postwar Wars in Southeast Asia -- American Vietnam Veterans -- Films, Fiction, and Poetry -- Postmortems -- Part II: The Vietnam War from A to Z -- Part III: Chronology -- Part IV: Resource Guide -- 1. General Works -- Bibliographies and Historiographical Essays -- Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and Atlases -- Surveys and Syntheses -- Document Collections -- Biographies -- Memoirs -- Oral Histories -- 2. History of Southeast Asia and U.S. Foreign Relations -- General History of Vietnam -- History of U.S. Foreign Relations -- The French Indochina War -- Laos and Cambodia -- 3. The Diem Years -- 4. North Vietnam and the Vietcong -- 5. Escalation of the American War -- The Gulf of Tonkin Incident -- Lyndon Johnson's Decisions for War -- 6. The American Way of War -- Military Operations and Overviews -- My Lai Massacre -- Pacification and Counterinsurgency -- International Setting -- 7. The Limits of American Power -- Antiwar Movement -- American Politics and Economy -- Television and the Press -- The Tet Offensive -- 8. The End of the American War -- Richard Nixon's War and Diplomacy -- The End of South Vietnam -- 9. The Legacy of the Vietnam War -- Lessons and Postmortems -- Literature, Movies, and Music -- American Cultural Myths and National Identity -- 10. Films and Documentaries -- 11. Electronic Resources -- Part V: Appendices -- Appendix 1. Documents -- Appendix 2. Statistics -- Index.