Want to learn more? Explore some of the many available resources on the Vietnam War era.
Recommended Quick Reads
The Vietnam War: A Concise International History by Mark Atwood Lawrence
Vietnam ‘67, an editorial series from the New York Times
The Vietnam War: 1945–1975, a companion book to New-York Historical’s exhibition
Memorials and Museums in the New York Metropolitan Area
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Complex, Manhattan
New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and Vietnam Era Museum & Educational Center, Holmdel, NJ
New York City Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza, Manhattan
“After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History” exhibition, Asia Society, Manhattan, Sept. 8, 2017-Jan. 21, 2018
Archives & Digital Resources
Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
Freedom of Information Act
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum
LBJ Presidential Library
Library of Congress Veterans History Project
National Archives
National Archives Educator Resources, The War in Vietnam: A Story in Photographs
Oakland Museum of California Online Collection
The Pentagon Papers
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
Swarthmore College Peace Collection
The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration
The Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University
Vietnam Graffiti Project
Documentaries
The Vietnam War (2017) by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, PBS
On Two Fronts: Latinos and Vietnam (2015) by Mylène Moreno, PBS
Brothers in War (2014) by Liz Reph, National Geographic
Sir! No Sir! (2005) by David Zeiger
The Fog of War (2003) by Errol Morris
The War at Home (1979) by Glen Silber and Barry Alexander Brown
The Anderson Platoon (1967) by Pierre Schoendoerffer
General Histories of the Vietnam War
Christian Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (2015)
David Halberstam, Ho (1971)
Mark Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (2008)
Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (2001)
Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (2014)
Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (2013)
Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (2006)
Lien-Hang Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the war for Peace in Vietnam (2012)
Steward O’Nan, ed., The Vietnam Reader: The Definitive Collection of Fiction and Nonfiction on the War (1981)
Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (1999)
Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 (1990)
The Home Front
Andrew Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (2013)
Beth Bailey, America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (2009)
Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (1993)
Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (1980 / 2003)
The Great Books Foundation, Standing Down: From Warrior to Civilian (2013)
Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (2000)
Penny Lewis, Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory (2013)
David Maraniss, They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 (2003)
David Parsons, Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouses and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era (2017)
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2009)
Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam (1994)
Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?: American Protest against the War in Vietnam, 1963-1975 (1984)
The War Front
Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War (2015)
Fred Branfman,Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War (1972)
Seth Jacobs, The Universe Unraveling: American Foreign Policy in Cold War Laos (2012)
Kyle Longley, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam (2008)
David Maraniss, They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 (2003)
William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (2002)
Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (2013)
Kara Vuic, Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War (2009)
Vietnamese History
Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (2016)
Huu Ngoc, Viet Nam: Tradition and Change (2016)
Oral Histories and Memoirs
Christian Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (2003)
Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (1977)
Dang Thuy Tram, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace (2005)
James Ebert, A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam, 1965–1972 (1993)
Bernard Edelman, Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1985)
Michael Herr, Dispatches (1977)
Wayne Karlin, Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam (2009)
Philip Napoli, Bringing It All Back Home: An Oral History of New York City’s Vietnam Veterans (2014)
Nha Ca, trans. Olga Dorr, Mourning Headband for Hue: An Account of the Battle for Hue, Vietnam 1968 (2014)
David Parks, GI Diary (1968)
G. B. Tran, Vietnamerica (2010)
Journalism and Photojournalism
Alyssa Adams and Hal Buell, Eddie Adams: Vietnam (2008)
Associated Press, Vietnam: The Real War (2013)
Horst Faas and Tim Page, Requiem: By the Photographers who Died in Vietnam (1997)
Library of America, Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism (1998)
Tim Page, Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side (2002)
Fiction and Poetry
Bao Ninh, Sorrow of War (1990)
The Great Books Foundation, Standing Down: From Warrior to Civilian (2013)
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)
Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country (1985)
Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn (2010)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (2015)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees (2017)
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (1990)
Steward O’Nan, ed., The Vietnam Reader: The Definitive Collection of Fiction and Nonfiction on the War (1981)
Bruce Weigl, Song of Napalm: Poems (1988)
Books for Kids and Teens
Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui, A Different Pond (2017)
Eve Bunting, illustrated by Ronald Himler, The Wall (1990)
Frances O’Roark Dowell, Shooting the Moon (2008)
Russell Freedman, Vietnam: A History of the War (2016)
Cynthia Kadohata, Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam (2007)
Thanhha Lai, Inside Out & Back Again (2011)
Walter Dean Myers, Patrol (2002)
Margot Raven, illustrated by Mike Benny, America’s White Table (2005)
Gary Schmidt, Okay for Now (2011)
Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous (2015)
Marilyn Young, John Fitzgerald, and Tom Grunfeld, The Vietnam War: A History in Documents (2003)
