Back Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959–1969

Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959–1969

“[H]istorians and students will find Reporting Vietnam to be a rich and handy reference. For others, it will be—with 25—plus years of hindsight—simply fascinating reading. Some of it may bring a tear. Bits of it may cause a chuckle. All of it will provoke thought.”— USA Today

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Video The Fate of the Earth: Jonathan Schell and His Legacy
December 28, 2020

News The Battle of Huế, fifty years later: the first draft of history as “a vital public service”
February 13, 2018

News Geoffrey C. Ward on Reporting Vietnam: “An astonishingly polished first draft of history”
October 19, 2017

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Twenty-five years after the last American troops withdrew from Vietnam, this unique two-volume anthology from the Library of America evokes a turbulent and controversial period in American history and journalism. Drawn from original newspaper and magazine reports and contemporary books, this volume along with its companion brings together the work of over eighty remarkable writers to create an unprecedented mosaic view of the war and its impact on an increasingly fractured American society.

The first volume traces the deepening American involvement in South Vietnam from the first deaths of American advisers in 1959 through the controversial battle of “Hamburger Hill” in 1969. Malcolm Browne, Neil Sheehan, and David Halberstam report on the guerrilla warfare of the early 1960s; Jack P. Smith, Ward Just, and Peter Arnett experience the terrors of close-range combat in the Central Highlands; Marguerite Higgins and Frances FitzGerald observe South Vietnamese politics; Jonathan Schell records the destructive effects of American firepower in Quang Ngai; Tom Wolfe captures the cool courage of navy pilots over North Vietnam.

Writers who covered the bitter controversy at home are included as well—Meg Greenfield describing an early teach-in, Norman Mailer at the Pentagon March, Jeffrey Blankfort exploring the sorrowful impact of the war on a small town in Ohio. Thomas Johnson and Wallace Terry examine the changing attitudes of African-American soldiers fighting America’s first fully integrated war.

Included in full is Daniel Lang’s Casualties of War, the haunting story of a five-man reconnaissance patrol choosing between good and evil.

This volume contains a detailed chronology of the war, historical maps, biographical profiles of the journalists, explanatory notes, a glossary of military terms, an index, and a 32-page insert of photographs of the correspondents, many from private collections and never before seen.

The advisory board for Reporting Vietnam includes Milton J. Bates, professor of English at Marquette University; Lawrence Lichty, professor of radio, television, and film at Northwestern University; Paul L. Miles, professor of history at Princeton University; Ronald H. Spector, professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University; and Marilyn B. Young (1937–2017), professor of history at New York University.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959–1969 is kept in print by a gift from the J. Aron Charitable Foundation to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Video The Fate of the Earth: Jonathan Schell and His Legacy
December 28, 2020

News The Battle of Huế, fifty years later: the first draft of history as “a vital public service”
February 13, 2018

News Geoffrey C. Ward on Reporting Vietnam: “An astonishingly polished first draft of history”
October 19, 2017

News Ken Burns cites LOA’s Reporting Vietnam as “go-to source” for his new film
October 6, 2017

Interviews Maverick morality and intellectual passion: Thomas Mallon on Mary McCarthy’s fictions
April 3, 2017
Table of Contents

TIME
Death at Intermission Time
First U.S. Advisers Killed in South Vietnam: July 1959

Stanley Karnow
Diem Defeats His Own Best Troops
Challenges to Diem: January 1961

Malcolm W. Browne
Paddy War
Guerilla War in the Mekong Delta: December 1961

Homer Bigart
A “Very Real War” in Vietnam—and the Deep U.S. Commitment
Increasing American Involvement: February 1962

Malcolm W. Browne
“The Enemy Had Left a Display for Us”
Massacre in the Ca Mau Peninsula: February 1962

Bernard B. Fall
Master of the Red Jab
Interview with Ho Chi Minh: July 1962

Homer Bigart
Vietnam Victory Remote Despite U.S. Aid to Diem
A Skeptical Assessment: July 1962

Neil Sheehan
Vietnamese Ignored U.S. Battle Order
Battle of Ap Bac: January 1963

David Halberstam
“An Endless, Relentless War”
Helicopter Assault in the Ca Mau Peninsula: April 1963

Malcolm W. Browne
“He Was Sitting in the Center of a Column of Flame”
Suicide in Saigon: June 1963

Marguerite Higgins
The Diem Government, Pro and Con
Politics in Saigon: August 1963

Joseph Alsop
In the Gia Long Palace
Nhu and Diem: September 1963

Stanley Karnow
The Fall of the House of Ngo Dinh

David Halberstam
“They Can Win a War If Someone Shows Them How
Profile of John Paul Vann: 1962-1964

U.S. News & World Report
“We Are Losing, Morale Is Bad… If They’d Give Us Good Planes”
A Pilot’s Letters Home: November 1963-March 1964

Beverly Deepe
“The pink cloud became black”
Christmas Eve Bomb in Saigon: December 1963

Russell Baker
Befuddled in Asia
Confusion Over Policy: March 1965

John Flynn
Marines Get Flowers for a Tough Mission
First Combat Troops Land: March 1965

Roger Rapoport
Protest, Learning, Heckling Spark Viet Rally
First Campus “Teach-In”: March 1965

Meg Greenfield
After the Washington Teach-In
Controversy Over the War Intensifies: May 1965

Don Moser
Eight Dedicated Men Marked for Death
Struggle for Loc Dien: Summer 1965

Bernard B. Fall
Vietnam Blitz: A Report on the Impersonal War
American Buildup: September 1965

William Tuohy
A Big “Dirty Little War”
Terror and Counter-terror: Autumn 1965

Tom Wolfe
From The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Ken Kesey Addresses an Anti-War Rally: October 1965

Specialist 4/C Jack P. Smith
“Men All Around Me Were Screaming”
Death in the Ia Drang Valley: November 1965

Susan Sheehan
A Viet Cong
A Defector Tells His Story: 1965

McCandlish Phillips
Two Hilltops in a Marine’s Life
Letters Home: April 1965-February 1966

Henry F. Graff
Teach-In on Vietnam By…The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of State
The Administration Defends Its Policies: February 1966

Afro-American
No Room in the Cemetery
A Soldier’s Burial: May 1966

Ward S. Just
Reconnaissance
Combat in the Central Highlands: June 1966

Frank Harvey
“Only You Can Prevent Forests”
Spraying Defoliants: July 1966

Martha Gellhorn
“Suffer the Little Children…”
Civilian Casualties in South Vietnam: August-September 1966

Neil Sheehan
Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk
Veteran Reporter Reassesses the War: October 1966

Frances FitzGerald
“The Long Fear”
Politics in the Mekong Delta: 1966

Harrison E. Salisbury
U.S. Raids Better 2 Towns; Supply Route Is Little Hurt
The Bombing of North Vietnam: December 1966

Bernard B. Fall
“Unrepentant, Unyielding”: An Interview with Viet Cong Prisoners
U.S. Offensive in the Iron Triangle: January 1967

Jonathan Randal
U.S. Marines Seize 3d Hill in Vietnam After 12-Day Push
Khe Sanh Hill Fights: May 1967

Ward S. Just
Saigon and Other Syndromes
A Reporter Looks Back: December 1965-May 1967

Don Moser
The Vietcong Cadre of Terror
War in Saigon: June 1965-July 1967

Jonathan Schell
From The Military Half: An Account of the Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin Southern I Corps: August 1967

Richard Harwood
The War Just Doesn’t Add Up
Conflicting Views: September 1967

Michael J. Arlen
A Day in the Life
A TV Crew At Con Thien: September 1967

Norman Mailer
From The Armies of the Night
The March on the Pentagon: October 1967

Peter Arnett
Hill 875
Battle of Dak To: November 1967

Tom Wolfe
The Truest Sport: Jousting with Sam and Charlie
Air War Over North Vietnam: December 1967

Charles Mohr
U.S. Aide in Embassy Villa Kills Guerilla with Pistol
The Tet Offensive: January 1968

Don Oberdorfer
From Tet!
The Viet Cong in Hue: January-February 1968

Lee Lescaze
A Third of Mytho Destroyed in Delta Fighting
The Tet Offensive: February 1968

John T. Wheeler
Life in the V Ring
Khe Sanh Under Siege: February 1968

Walter Cronkite
“We Are Mired in Stalemate…”
Aftermath of Tet: February 1968

Don Oberdorfer
“An Ending of His Own”
Lyndon Johnson Changes Course: March 1968

Mary McCarthy
Hanoi—March 1968
An American in North Vietnam: March-April 1968

Thomas A. Johnson
The U.S. Negro in Vietnam
Black Servicemen and the War: 1968

Norman Mailer
From “The Siege of Chicago”
The Democratic Convention: August 1968

Steve Lerner
A Visit to Chicago: Blood, Sweat, & Tears
The Democratic Convention: August 1968

Joe McGinniss
From The Selling of the President 1968
The Nixon Campaign and Vietnam: September 1968

Kevin Buckley
A Small Contribution
Firefight Near Loc Ninh: October 1968

Zalin Grant
“We Lived for a Time Like Dogs”
American POWs in a Jungle Camp: July 1968-January 1969

Jeffrey Blankfort
Our Town: The War Comes Home to Beallsville, Ohio
A Small Town Mourns Its Dead: Spring 1969

David Hoffman
Hamburger Hill: The Army’s Rationale
Battle in the A Shau Valley: May 1969

Wallace Terry
Black Power in Viet Nam
Racial Tensions in the Military: September 1969

Daniel Lang
Casualties of War
An Atrocity and Its Aftermath: November 1966-October 1969
Contributors

Joseph Alsop
Michael J. Arlen
Peter Arnett
Russell Baker
Homer Bigart
Jeffrey A. Blankport
Malcolm W. Browne
Kevin Buckley
Walter Cronkite
Beverly Deepe
Bernard B. Fall
Frances FitzGerald
John Flynn
Martha Gellhorn
Henry F. Graff
Zalin Grant
Meg Greenfield
David Halberstam
Frank Harvey
Richard Harwood
Marguerite Higgins
David Hoffman
Thomas A. Johnson
Ward S. Just
Stanley Karnow
Daniel Lang
Steve Lerner
Lee Lescaze
Mary McCarthy
Joe McGinniss
Norman Mailer
Charles Mohr
Don Moser
Don Oberdorfer
McCandlish Phillips
Jonathan Randal
Roger Rapoport
Harrison E. Salisbury
Jonathan Schell
Neil Sheehan
Susan Sheehan
Jack P. Smith
Wallace Terry
William Tuohy
John T. Wheeler
Tom Wolfe

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