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" The Perfect War : "
James William Gibson.
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BL
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| Record Number
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845633
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| Main Entry
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Gibson, James William.
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| Title & Author
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The Perfect War : : Technowar In Vietnam /\ James William Gibson.
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| Publication Statement
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[Place of publication not identified] :: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.,, 2007.
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| Page. NO
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1 online resource
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| ISBN
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0802196810
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: 9780802196811
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| Notes
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Title from resource description page (Recorded Books, viewed April 25, 2016).
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| Contents
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Cover Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Tables; Preface; Introduction to the 2000 Edition; Part 1. In Search of War; 1. Trailing the Beast; 2. Legacies of Resistance: Vietnamese Nationalism against the Chinese and French; 3. The Permanent War Begins: 1940-1954; 4. America Comes to Vietnam: Installing the Mechanisms, 1954-1964; Part II. The Green Machine; 5. Technowar at Ground Level: Search-and-Destroy as Assembly Line; 6. The Tet Offensive and the Production of a Double Reality; 7. Forced Draft: Urbanization and the Consumer Society Come to Vietnam
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8. Pacification War in the CountrysidePart III. Death from Above; 9. Air War over North Vietnam: Bombing as Communication; 10. Structural Dynamics of Escalation in Theory and Practice, 1966-1967; 11. The Structure of Air Operations; 12. The Redistribution of Air War: Laos, 1968-1973; 13. Closing Out the War: Cambodia and North Vietnam, 1969-1973; Part IV. The Perfect War; 14. Finding the Light at the End of the Tunnel; 15. Surveying the Wreckage: The Limits of Conventional Criticism and the Reproduction of Technowar
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Appendix: The Warrior's Knowledge: Social Stratification and the Book Corpus of VietnamNotes; Index
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| Abstract
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In this groundbreaking book, James William Gibson shatters the misled assumptions behind both liberal and conservative explanations for America's failure in Vietnam. Gibson shows how American government and military officials developed a disturbingly limited concept of war'what he calls "technowar"'in which all efforts were focused on maximizing the enemy's body count, regardless of the means. Consumed by a blind faith in the technology of destruction, American leaders failed to take into account their enemy's highly effective guerrilla tactics. Indeed, technowar proved woefully inapplicable to the actual political and military strategies used by the Vietnamese, and Gibson reveals how U.S. officials consistently falsified military records to preserve the illusion that their approach would prevail. Gibson was one of the first historians to question the fundamental assumptions behind American policy, and The Perfect War is a brilliant reassessment of the war'now republished with a new introduction by the author.
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| Subject
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History.
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HISTORY-- Military-- Vietnam War.
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History.
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| Dewey Classification
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959.7043
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| LC Classification
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DS558.G537 2007
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| Added Entry
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Recorded Books, Inc.
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