Lyndon Johnson's War: America's Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968 (Hill and Wang Critical Issues) Paperback – August 30, 1997

The best book I've read on Vietnam and our involvement. One of the significant aspects of this book is the character development. He not only delves deep into Lyndon Johnson's motivation but also Ho Chi Min and the various leaders of South Vietnam as well as the many Americans who contributed to our escalation of that war. Mr. Hunt made a very good case for why this war could not have ended in any other way other than how it did.

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Author Michael H. Hunt has decided to write about the topic of the Vietnam War and focus on the U.S. federal government's disastrous decisions during the conflict. To say the least, this presents a daunting task. Even when narrowing things down to the characters of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon, Hunt is still trying to make sense of complex personalities with multiple, often highly contradictory goals. However, the author does a pretty good job in detailing the mistakes that plagued the U.S. fight.The actual Vietnamese people, across area after area, frequently viewed the war as a continuation of their struggles for independence against the French and Japanese decades earlier. The "Cold War" context through which American Presidents, especially Johnson, saw everything ended up blinding them time and time again. Warning signs were all over the place. Johnson's government decided neither to make clear-cut decisions to escalate military involvement nor to just set up negotiated settlements; its general Vietnam policy resembled somebody bumbling through a dark room, hoping in vain to find the light-switch. Efforts to have our cake and eat it too proved disastrous.The book's only major flaw is, unfortunately, a big one. Its focus on U.S. Presidents, particularly Johnson, is rather limiting. Hunt's work is surprisingly short. That makes it easy to read, sure, but coupled with his polemic tone (although, to be fair, it's very well-written and logically argued, without any of the drawbacks of some cable TV rant or the like) an average reader might feel a bit underwhelmed. Nonetheless, this a piece of solid writing that's highly recommended to anybody into world history.

I am very pleasd with this product. I am so glad I can get this item. Cathy was a big help for me.

An excellent short political overview of that period. I recommend it.

This book ... runs just over a hundred pages, but Hunt spends the first half of the book showing how it was Truman, Ike's and Kennedy's War, then writes one chapter on Johnson then a brief conclusion. I agree with his thesis that it was Johnson's war; after all Johnson is responsible for the biggest escalations in the war. There's just not much new or illuminating here.I found the most useful part of the book to be his description of Kennedy's whiz kids and the energy and enthusiasm they bring to the scenario. But that supports an argument that this was JFK's war even if he didn't live to see it to the end. Ultimately it was a war typical of America's tendency throughout the Cold War to see everything in black and white, freedom vs. totalitarianism. Any President, faced with the same choices and domestic political context, would have made the same decisions.

This book has nothing to do with Lyndon Johnson. He isn't even introduced till the third chapter. Good information but bad name for a book.

As one of the previous reviewers have already noted, Dr. Hunt spends a lot of time telling us how Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon made decisions that ultimately led the slide into the Vietnam War. What Hunt does say in one chapter is that Johnson made the critical decisions which ultimately led to the disaster of the Vietnam War. At a little over one hundred pages, the author describes the slide into the war with clear concise readable pages. The Vietnam War was one of the battles of the Cold War. He also shows how poor leadership on Kennedy's part led us into this disaster, and how a poor game plan kept us there past the 1968 election (Nixon's fault). There is a lot of blame to go around between both parties and presidents. However Johnson was the key decision maker.This a compact readable book. It makes its arguments concise and to the point. This a nice diplomatic history of the slide to war with the Vietnamese Communists.

I'm writing my A Level History coursework on Johnson in Vietnam and I've found this book really helpful. It's more argument based rather than strictly factual which was what I needed for my coursework. The book itself is easy to read as well as providing a useful insight into the conflict.

Arrived on time. A fascinating read