The War Within
America's Battle Over Vietnam
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam is a painfully engrossing and popularly written account of how the battle on the home front ended America’s least popular war. This absorbing narrative, hailed by critics of every persuasion, is the fruit of over a decade’s worth of research: the author sifted through mountains of government documents, press coverage, and transcripts of interviews he conducted with virtually all of the key players, both inside the U.S. government and among the dissenters who eventually brought the war to an end. In these pages the antiwar era comes to life through the words of scores of participants, both the famous and the forgotten, who speak with candor and passion about this tumultuous period. A remarkable story of a powerful grassroots movement and its influence on officials in Washington.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wells's comprehensive examination of domestic opposition to the war in Vietnam chronicles the successes of the anti-war movement. Despite an intensive effort by the U.S. government to disrupt and divide it, the movement of 1964-1973 played a major role in restricting, deescalating and then ending our involvement in Indochina. Wells, a freelance writer, explores the acrimonious debates among high-level hawks and doves in Washington. He analyzes the effect of the movement on war policy, showing how it hindered air and ground operations during the Johnson administration, exerted a substantial impact on Nixon's Indochina policy, had a direct bearing on the deterioration of troop morale and discipline (which provided additional impetus for troop withdrawal), and ultimately led to the Watergate scandal which, as Wells tells it, played a pivotal role in ending the war. This absorbing drama filled with vivid characterizations is an impressive work of scholarship. Photos.
