This book is part of the Blackwell Companion to American History series. It contains twenty-four, mainly original, historiographical and narrative essays gathered under three headings: the Vietnamese in context; the Americans in Southeast Asia context; and Americans at Home and Abroad. The broad themes are the political strategies of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon; US military tactics and consequences; the wider war in Laos and Cambodia; the American home front; and how race, class and gender affected the situation in Vietnam and the US. The essays thus look at the transformative aspects of the war on Vietnamese and American societies.

This is a corrective volume of essays. It explicitly aims to avoid simply looking at the diplomatic history of the Cold War or the operational and strategic–military aspects of the conflict. The new avenues it opens up are its strengths – for instance an interesting essay on Ho Chi Minh by William Ducker. On the US side of the conflict there are some excellent essays addressing key topics – would Kennedy have withdrawn, why were the ARVN so poor and what was Nixon doing with the final negotiations and the decision-making process? These are done well. The later essay on gender and decision-making is very good on the role of social construction and is a flagship for a necessary development in the scholarship. The final section concentrates far more on the anti-war movement and the role of African Americans (in a stimulating essay by James Westheider) and Mexican Americans.

The new avenues are also its weaknesses – an essay on Japanese deserters in Vietnam between 1945 and 1950 oddly uses one of six slots on the Vietnamese perspective in a study of US history. The parameters of the essays could therefore have been tighter and the Vietnam War defined more clearly. What is surprising is the slim attention given to the actual fighting, its effect and how that has been portrayed in film and print media.

As a corrective volume it cannot be a sole reader for a course on the Vietnam War, even if it has a large “select” bibliography. However, the quality of the essays, many of which come with their own bibliography, make it an easy recommendation to those looking at the war. The themes could have been more coherent in coverage and the lack of a substantial essay by the two renowned editors in justifying the selections, omissions and who they are correcting is a serious gap.