Vietnam: Explaining America's Lost War

“This is a book one will wish to assign to students: it lays out, with enviable clarity, what is at stake, what evidence exists for reaching a judgment, what various historians have concluded on the basis of the evidence they use and/or ignore, and Hess's own position on the matter. Because he is an honest historian, Hess does not pretend to be neutral.” (International History Review, June 2009)

"[Hess] has simply provided the best general overview of the literature on the Vietnam War that has been written to date." (Review of Politics, March 2009)

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

"Gary Hess’s new book is a survey of the scholarship on the Vietnam War which pits this revisionist historiography (the so-called ‘winnable’ war tradition) against the more numerous orthodox historiography (the ‘unwinnable’ war tradition) ... .[The book is] an enormously stimulating volume which usefully organises the literature on thematic lines and clarifies the battle lines between the orthodox and revisionist schools." (Reviews in History, January 2009)

“Vietnam is the clearest explanation of the arguments over American involvement in the Vietnam War. It is essential reading for teachers and students of the war.”
–Robert Schulzinger, University of Colorado

“Hess, one of America's leading diplomatic historians, has written the most useful book to date – for both teachers and students – on the nation’s ordeal in Vietnam. It is a magnificently balanced study of the issues and the literature.”
–Warren Cohen, University of Maryland-Baltimore County