Why read Reckoning?

Book cover of Reckoning: Vietnam and America's Cold War Experience, 1945-1991

Book description

Cold War orthodoxy provides Americans with every reason to be proud of their “long twilight struggle” against Communism. It begins, of course, with Harry Truman, his heroic resistance to Soviet aggression in Europe, his defense of democracy in Korea and his opposition to the disastrous influence of McCarthyism, a malevolent…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Reckoning as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Matt Jackson

Author

I recommend this book as it gives a detailed account of political actions both before the engagement of conventional US forces and after US forces departed Vietnam. I learned a lot about political decisions made in the late 1940s that committed us to actions in the 1950s and ’60s.

Many of the characters in our government I learned were behind the scenes decision makers not elected by the people but possess in the power to commit us to this war. The need for transparency in our government comes through loud and clear, I found, and is only possible with a…

From Matt's list on The best books I have found that cover the how and why we fought in the Vietnam War.