Mark Atwood Lawrence

A Concise International History

The Vietnam War

A groundbreaking new history of how the Vietnam War thwarted U.S. liberal ambitions in the developing world and at home in the 1960s At the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of the United States to promote democracy and development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. With U.S. power, resources, and expertise, almost anything seemed possible in the countries of the Cold War’s “Third World”—developing, postcolonial nations unaligned with the United States or Soviet Union. Yet by the end of the decade, this vision lay in ruins. What happened? In The End of Ambition, Mark Atwood Lawrence offers a groundbreaking new history of America’s most consequential decade. He reveals how the Vietnam War, combined with dizzying social and political changes in the United States, led to a collapse of American liberal ambition in the Third World—and how this transformation was connected to shrinking aspirations back home in America. By the middle and late 1960s, democracy had given way to dictatorship in many Third World countries, while poverty and inequality remained pervasive. As America’s costly war in Vietnam dragged on and as the Kennedy years gave way to the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, America became increasingly risk averse and embraced a new policy of promoting mere stability in the Third World. Paying special attention to the U.S. relationships with Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia, and southern Africa, The End of Ambition tells the story of this momentous change and of how international and U.S. events intertwined. The result is an original new perspective on a war that continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy today.

The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

The End of Ambition

Mark K. Updegrove

The Life and Legacies of Lyndon Baines Johnson

LBJ's America

In innumerable ways, we still live in LBJ's America. More than half a century after his death, Lyndon Baines Johnson continues to exert profound influence on American life. This collection skillfully explores his seminal accomplishments—protecting civil rights, fighting poverty, expanding access to medical care, lowering barriers to immigration—as well as his struggles in Vietnam and his difficulty responding to other challenges in an era of declining US influence on the global stage. Sweeping and influential, LBJ's America probes the ways in which the accomplishments, setbacks, controversies and crises of 1963 to 1969 laid the foundations of contemporary America and set the stage for our own era of policy debates, political contention, distrust of government, and hyper-partisanship.

Erika Marie Bsumek

David Kinkela

Nation-states are failing to resolve global problems that transcend the abilities of single governments or even groups of governments to address. This book argues that this dilemma is not as new as is sometimes claimed. It offers crucial context and even lessons for present-day debates about resolving the most urgent environmental problems.

New Approaches to International Environmental History

Nation-States and the Global Environment

Francis J. Gavin

As globalization has deepened in recent years, historians have begun to see that many of the global challenges we face today first drew serious attention in the 1960s. This book examines how the Johnson presidency responded to these problems and draws out the lessons for today.

Lyndon Johnson and the New Global Challenges of the 1960s

Beyond the Cold War

The Vietnam War: An International History in Documents places America's most controversial conflict in a broad, international context that reflects the experiences of North and South Vietnam, China, and European nations, as well as the United States. Featuring newly available material, this brief collection of primary-source documents includes several never-before published and freshly translated diplomatic documents, social and cultural commentaries, memoirs, cartoons, posters, and photos. Mark Atwood Lawrence enables students to compare and contrast different vantage points on the war and to appreciate the conflict in all of its complexity.

An International History in Documents

Fredrik Logevall

How did the conflict between Vietnamese nationalists and French colonial rulers erupt into a major Cold War struggle between communism and Western liberalism? To understand the course of the Vietnam wars, it is essential to explore the connections between events within Vietnam and global geopolitical currents in the decade after the Second World War. In this illuminating work, leading scholars examine various dimensions of the struggle between France and Vietnamese revolutionaries that began in 1945 and reached its climax at Dien Bien Phu. Several essays break new ground in the study of the Vietnamese revolution and the establishment of the political and military apparatus that successfully challenged both France and the United States. Other essays explore the roles of China, France, Great Britain, and the United States, all of which contributed to the transformation of the conflict from a colonial skirmish to a Cold War crisis. Taken together, the essays enable us to understand the origins of the later American war in Indochina by positioning Vietnam at the center of the grand clash between East and West and North and South in the middle years of the twentieth century.

Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis

The First Vietnam War

R. Joseph Parrott

A major reassessment of the rise and global impact of revolutionary Third World radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Tricontinental Revolution

Virginia Garrard-Burnett

Julio E. Moreno

The dominant tradition in writing about U.S.–Latin American relations during the Cold War views the United States as all-powerful. That perspective, represented in the metaphor “talons of the eagle,” continues to influence much scholarly work down to the present day. The goal of this collection of essays is not to write the United States out of the picture but to explore the ways Latin American governments, groups, companies, organizations, and individuals promoted their own interests and perspectives. The book also challenges the tendency among scholars to see the Cold War as a simple clash of “left” and “right.” In various ways, several essays disassemble those categories and explore the complexities of the Cold War as it was experienced beneath the level of great-power relations.

New Histories of Latin America's Cold War

Beyond the Eagle's Shadow

That decision, he argues, marked America's first definitive step toward embroilment in Indochina, the start of a long series of moves that would lead the Johnson administration to commit U.S. combat forces a decade and a half later."--Jacket.

Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam

Assuming the Burden

Hardly a day passes without journalists, policymakers, academics, or scientists calling attention to the worldwide scale of the environmental crisis confronting humankind. While climate change has generated the greatest alarm in recent years, other global problems-desertification, toxic pollution, species extinctions, drought, and deforestation, to name just a few-loom close behind. The scope of the most pressing environmental problems far exceeds the capacity of individual nation-states, much less smaller political entities. To compound these problems, economic globalization, the growth of non-governmental activist groups, and the accelerating flow of information have fundamentally transformed the geopolitical landscape. Despite the new urgency of these challenges, however, they are not without historical precedent. As this book shows, nation-states have long sought agreements to manage migratory wildlife, just as they have negotiated conventions governing the exploitation of rivers and other bodies of water. Similarly, nation-states have long attempted to control resources beyond their borders, to impose their standards of proper environmental exploitation on others, and to draw on expertise developed elsewhere to cope with environmental problems at home. This collection examines this little-understood history, providing case studies and context to inform ongoing debates.

Hailed as a "pithy and compelling account of an intensely relevant topic" (Kirkus Reviews), this wide-ranging volume offers a superb account of a key moment in modern U.S. and world history. Drawing upon the latest research in archives in China, Russia, and Vietnam, Mark Lawrence creates an extraordinary, panoramic view of all sides of the war. His narrative begins well before American forces set foot in Vietnam, delving into French colonialism's contribution to the 1945 Vietnamese revolution, and revealing how the Cold War concerns of the 1950s led the United States to back the French. The heart of the book covers the "American war," ranging from the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem and the impact of the Tet Offensive to Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the final peace agreement of 1973. Finally, Lawrence examines the aftermath of the war, from the momentous liberalization--"Doi Moi"--in Vietnam to the enduring legacy of this infamous war in American books, films, and political debate.

Jeffrey A. Engel

Andrew Preston

How should America wield its enormous power beyond its borders? Should it adhere to grand principles or act on narrow self-interest? Should it partner with other nations or avoid entangling alliances? Americans have been grappling with questions like these throughout the nation's history, and especially since the emergence of the United States as a major world power in the late nineteenth century. America in the World illuminates this history by capturing the diverse voices and viewpoints of some of the most colorful and eloquent people who participated in these momentous debates. Spanning the era from the Gilded Age to the Obama years, this unique reader collects more than two hundred documents--everything from presidential addresses and diplomatic cables to political cartoons and song lyrics. It encompasses various phases of American diplomatic history that are typically treated separately, such as the First World War, the Cold War, and 9/11. The book presents the perspectives of elite policymakers--presidents, secretaries of state, generals, and diplomats--alongside those of other kinds of Americans, such as newspaper columnists, clergymen, songwriters, poets, and novelists. It also features numerous documents from other countries, illustrating how foreigners viewed America’s role in the world. Ideal for classroom use, America in the World sheds light on the complex interplay of political, economic, ideological, and cultural factors underlying the exercise of American power on the global stage. Includes more than two hundred documents from the late nineteenth century to today Looks at everything from presidential addresses to political cartoons and song lyrics Presents diverse perspectives, from elite policymakers to clergymen and novelists Features documents from outside the United States, illustrating how people in other countries viewed America’s role in the world

A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror

America in the World

The Vietnam War remains a topic of extraordinary interest, not least because of striking parallels between that conflict and more recent fighting in the Middle East. In The Vietnam War, Mark Atwood Lawrence draws upon the latest research in archives around the world to offer readers a superb account of a key moment in U.S. as well as global history. While focusing on American involvement between 1965 and 1975, Lawrence offers an unprecedentedly complete picture of all sides of the war, notably by examining the motives that drove the Vietnamese communists and their foreign allies. Moreover, the book carefully considers both the long- and short-term origins of the war. Lawrence examines the rise of Vietnamese communism in the early twentieth century and reveals how Cold War anxieties of the 1940s and 1950s set the United States on the road to intervention. Of course, the heart of the book covers the "American war," ranging from the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to the impact of the Tet Offensive on American public opinion, Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the 1968 presidential race, Richard Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the problematic peace agreement of 1973, which ended American military involvement. Finally, the book explores the complex aftermath of the war--its enduring legacy in American books, film, and political debate, as well as Vietnam's struggles with severe social and economic problems. A compact and authoritative primer on an intensely relevant topic, this well-researched and engaging volume offers an invaluable overview of the Vietnam War.

Mark Atwood Lawrence

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