Vietnam War Bibliography:

U.S. Policy: Nixon & Ford Administrations

Stephen Ambrose, Nixon, vol. 2, The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. 736 pp.

Stephen Ambrose, Nixon, vol. 3, Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Mortimer P. Ames, III, "Presidential Communications Management in the Nixon Administration." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Chicago, 2002. 220 pp. AAT 3048362.

Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam. New York: The Free Press, 2001. xv, 334 pp.

Larry Berman, "A Final Word on the 'Decent Interval' Strategy." SHAFR Newsletter, December 2003. (See also below, under Jeffrey Kimball.)

Virginia Brodine, Mark Selden, Keith M. Buchanan, and John W. Dower, Open Secret: The Kissinger-Nixon Doctrine in Asia. Introduction by Noam Chomsky. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. 218 pp.

William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. xix, 647 pp.

William Burr, ed., The Kissinger Transcripts: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977. Washington, D.C.: National Security Archive, George Washington University, 2006. 28,386 pp. A collection of more than 2,100 memoranda of conversations ("memcons"), published on microfiche and available online to subscribers at the ProQuest Digital National Security Archive.
          Twenty of the documents in this collection have been made available online to the general public, not just to subscribers, in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 192. These include:

William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, "Nixon's Secret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplomacy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test, October 1969." Cold War History 3:2 (January 2003), pp. 113-56.

William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, "Nixon’s Nuclear Ploy." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59:1 (January/February 2003), pp. 28-37, 72-73.

William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, eds., "Nixon's Nuclear Ploy: The Vietnam Negotiations and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test, October 1969." National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 81. December 23, 2002. The texts of twelve of the documents that were sources for the two articles immediately above.

William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, eds., "Nuclear Weapons, the Vietnam War, and the 'Nuclear Taboo'" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 195, July 31, 2006. Documents from the contingency planning done during the year 1969, code name Duck Hook, for a possible escalation of attacks against North Vietnam, some of which consider the possibility of nuclear weapons use. Also an introductory essay by the editors.

James M. Cannon, Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. pb Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. xvi, 496 pp.

"Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law" or, occasionally, "Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to Contemporary Law." A collection of material presenting U.S. opinions on issues involving international law appeared in each issue of The American Journal of International Law. It was compiled by someone (usually the Assistant Legal Adviser) in the Office of the Legal Adviser, Department of State. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the full text of this journal through the JSTOR American Journal of International Law browse page. Some of the more interesting Vietnam-related material that can be found in these compilations:

Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter. New York: Random House, 1998. 428 pp.

Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. I have not seen this one, but my impression is that it is an important study.

Thomas M. DeFrank, Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford. New York: Putnam (Penguin), 2007.

Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. 454 pp.

Bill Gulley, with Mary Ellen Reese, Breaking Cover. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980. 288 pp. Gulley was head of the White House Military Office.

Alexander M. Haig, Jr., with Charles McCarry, Inner Circles: How America Changed the World. New York: Warner, 1992. x, 610 pp. Haig, a young Army officer, was in the Pentagon 1962-65, served in Vietnam with the 1st Infantry Division 1966-67, then became one of the crucial shapers of US military and diplomatic policy serving under Henry Kissinger in the White House 1969-73.

H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House. New York: Putnam, 1994. This version, in book form, is abridged. A much more complete version, published on CD-ROM, is The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, the Complete Multimedia Edition. Santa Monica: Sony Electronic Publishing, 1994. A vital source; Haldeman was Nixon's chief of staff in the White House.

Jussi N. Hanhimaki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 554 pp.

Jussi M. Hanhimaki, "Some More 'Smoking Guns'? The Vietnam War and Kissinger's Summitry with Moscow and Beijing, 1971-73." SHAFR Newsletter, 32:4 (December 2001), pp. 40-45. Evidence Kissinger told Moscow and Beijing the U.S. just wanted a decent interval in Vietnam.

Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983. 698 pp.

Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. 893 pp.

Morton Kaplan, Abram Chayes, G. Warren Nutter, Paul C. Warnke, John P. Roche, and Clayton Fritchey, Vietnam Settlement: Why 1973, not 1969? Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1973. 208 pp.

Edward C. Keefer, "Key Sources for Nixon's Foreign Policy." Passport, 38:2 (August 2007), pp. 27-30. This article will probably go online soon at the Passport web site, but it was not there yet the last time I checked.

Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon's Vietnam War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. xvi, 495 pp. Best on Nixon, Kissinger, their relations with one another, and their handling of the Paris negotiations.

Jeffrey Kimball, The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. xvii, 352 pp. Winner of the Arthur Link - Warren Kuehl Prize, awarded by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Jeffrey Kimball, "The Case of the 'Decent Interval': Do We Now Have a Smoking Gun?" SHAFR Newsletter, 32:3 (September 2001), pp. 35-39. There was an exchange over this issue between Kimball and Larry Berman in 33:1 (March 2002), pp. 37-44. See also above, under Berman.

Jeffrey Kimball, "Decent Interval or Not? The Paris Agreement and the End of the Vietnam War." SHAFR Newsletter, December 2003.

Henry Kissinger, White House Years and Years of Upheaval. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979, 1982. xxiv, 1521, xxi, 1283 pp. Two fat volumes of memoirs by Richard Nixon's top foreign policy official, the man who ran the Paris negotiations. The first volume ends with the Paris Accords of January 1973, and the second with Nixon's resignation as president in 1974. Kissinger has a surprising ability to ignore the obvious.

Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. 1151 pp. Sequel to the above, covering the administration of Gerald Ford (including the end of the Vietnam War), with afterthoughts on Nixon.

Henry Kissinger, Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 564 pp. One of the crises is the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. 912 pp. Several chapters give Kissinger's view of the overall history of the war.

Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication From the Vietnam War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 635 pp.

Henry Kissinger, Vietnam: A Personal History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War. Touchstone, 2002. 400 pp. I have seen a listing for this, but I am not sure such a book was ever actually published. I think it is probably just an early planned title for the book listed above as Ending the Vietnam War.

Transcripts of some news conferences given by Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's special assistant for national security affairs, have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University. A sample of the available ones:

Lawrence J. Korb, The Fall and Rise of the Pentagon: American Defense Policies in the 1970s. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979.

Stanley I. Kutler, ed., Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Some Vietnam-related material, but not a lot.

David Landau, Kissinger: The Uses of Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. New York: Apollo Editions (Thomas Crowell Co.), 1974. xiii, 274 pp.

John F. Lehman, The Executive, Congress, and Foreign Policy: Studies of the Nixon Administration. New York: Praeger, 1976.

Adm. John S. McCain, Jr., "Red Shadow over Asia," Ordnance, no. 305 (March-April 1971), pp. 431-435.

Yanek Mieczkowski, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. 472 pp.

Roger Morris, Haig: The General's Progress. New York: Playboy Press, 1982.

Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

John P. Murtha, with John Plashal, From Vietnam to 9/11: On the Front Lines of National Security. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. 244 pp. The first chapter includes Murtha's Vietnam service. In 1966, he was a major in the Marine Corps Reserve. He volunteered to return to active duty and go to Vietnam, where he was made the intelligence officer of the 1st Marine Regiment; he held that job for a year. In 1974, he became the first Vietnam veteran to be elected to Congress; he travelled to Vietnam early in 1975 to evaluate the question of supplementary aid, which as a Democratic Party hawk he supported, and again in 1978 in connection with the search for MIAs.

National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) One: "The Situation in Vietnam." On January 21, 1969, Henry Kissinger presented a long list of questions about the Vietnam War (many of them in multiple parts) to the Departments of State and Defense, the JCS, the CIA, MACV, and the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon. He made a deliberate effort to get the divergent views of different organizations, rather than have them reach a consensus and then give him the consensus. A long summary of the results has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University, in six parts: front matter including cover letter of March 22, 1969, general summary (32 pp.), and Vietnam Questions (6 pp);   summary of responses to questions 1-10 (Communist forces, policies, and capabilities);   summary of responses to questions 11-15 (RVN forces, and pacification);   summary of responses to questions 16-21 (pacification, operations and administration in countryside);   summary of responses to questions 22-26 (Vietnamese politics; military operations);   summary of responses to questions 27-29 (effectiveness of bombing).

Larry A. Niksch, Vietnamization: The Program and Its Problems. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, January 5, 1972. 78 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in two parts: Front matter and pp. 1-44, pp. 45-78.

Richard Nixon, No More Vietnams. New York: Arbor House, 1985. pb New York: Avon, 1986. 240 pp.

Richard Nixon, The Real War. New York: Warner, 1980. 341 pp. pb, with a new introduction, New York: Warner, 1981. xvi, 366 pp. Contains only a moderate amount of discussion of Vietnam.

Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978. xi, 1120 pp.

nixontapes.org is a project making available, online, both transcripts and audio recordings from the taping system Nixon used in the White House.

Henry Paolucci, Public Image, Private Interest: Henry Kissinger's Foreign Policy Strategies in Vietnam. Smyrna, DE: Griffon House, 2002. 210 pp.

Douglas Pike, ed., The Bunker Papers: Reports to the President from Vietnam, 1967-1973, 3 vols., Indochina Research Monograph #5. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1990. xxxix, 899 pp. These reports, written by US Ambassador to Vietnam Ellsworth Bunker, mostly date from 1967 and 1968. The index is a big help. Vol. 3 (reports dated 12/19/68 to 5/5/73, and index) is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

Stephen P. Randolph, "A Bigger Game: Nixon, Kissinger, and the 1972 Easter Offensive." Ph.D. dissertation, History, George Washington University, 2005. 678 pp. AAT 3158518. The full text of the dissertation is available online if you are browsing the Internet from an institution, such as Clemson University, that has a subscription to ProQuest "Dissertations and Theses: Full Text."

Stephen P. Randolph, Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Easter Offensive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. x, 401 pp. Judging by the quality of a paper based on this research, which Col. Randolph (USAF, Ret.) presented at a conference at Texas Tech University, March 19, 2005, I expect this book to be excellent.

Peter W. Rodman, More Precious Than Peace: The Cold War and the Struggle for the Third World. New York: Scribner, 1994. Rodman was an aide to Henry Kissinger. I haven't seen this, but it could be very interesting.

Peter W. Rodman, Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. New York: Knopf, 2009 (forthcoming).

Jonathan Schell, The Time of Illusion. New York: Knopf, 1976. A study of both foreign and domestic policy under the Nixon presidency.

Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. xix, 387 pp.

Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Hart Strober, Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. xi, 576 pp. pb 1996.

Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2003. I believe this is a revised edition of the above.

Jeremy Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap (Harvard University Press), 2007. 368 pp. A sympathetic portrait.

Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace: Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years. New York: Viking, 1978. vii, 822 pp.

Dale Van Atta, With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics. University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. xviii, 641. 648 pp. An authorized biography of Nixon's Secretary of Defense.

Richard J. Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag: A Republican's Challenge to his Party. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. Whalen had been one of Nixon's speechwriters.

James H. Willbanks, Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost its War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. xi, 377 pp. I have looked at the first five pages, and found a starting number of errors, some of them quite serious. Example: p. 5 describes the fighting in the Tet Offensive of 1968 as having been much briefer than it actually was. Example: p. 3 says that in October 1974, "the U.S. Congress appropriated only $700 million for the defense of South Vietnam and Cambodia, indicating that the amount would be drastically cut in the future." P. 4, discussing the situation of early 1975, says "Congress had further reduced military aid to Saigon." The reality is that the figure of $700 million voted in October 1974 was only the South Vietnam component of the Fiscal Year 1975 military aid package for South Vietnam and Cambodia. The Cambodia component, $200 million, was added in a second vote in December. The Congress did not reduce aid below this $900 million. Right up until the time the war was ended by the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon, U.S. aid continued to flow on the basis of the $900 million figure, which indeed had been augmented, not reduced, since the Congress had given the Defense Department permission to give to give items that were considered surplus to U.S. military need--tens of thousands of tons of artillery shells, for example--without counting their value as part of the $900 million figure for military aid. Seeing so many errors in the early pages has discouraged me from reading further.

A variety of documents relating to the Vietnam War have been placed online by the Gerald Ford Presidential Library. See

See also Peace Negotiations and the Paris Agreement.

See also State Department Publications.
 

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Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, Edwin E. Moise. This document may be reproduced only by permission. Revised August 5, 2008.