1968 was an unprecedented year in terms of upheaval on numerous scales: political, military, economic, social, cultural. In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Lu...

Essays on a presidency during a pivotal period in international affairs, informed by newly declassified documents.Throughout his presidency, Ronald Reagan sought "peace through strength" during an era of historic change. In the decades since, pundits and scholars have argued over the president's legacy: Some consider Reagan a charismatic and consummate leader who renewed American strength and defeated communism; to others he was an ambitious and dangerous warmonger ...

Best remembered as the father of Vice President Al Gore, Albert Gore, Sr., worked tirelessly in politics himself, a Democratic congressman and senator from 1939 to 1971 and a representative of southern liberalism and American reformism. In the first comprehensive biography of Gore, Kyle Longley has produced an incisive portrait of a significant American political leader and an arresting narrative of the shaping of a southern and American political tradition. His research includes archival ...

Although he left office nearly 20 years ago, Ronald Reagan remains a potent symbol for the conservative movement. The Bush administration frequently invokes his legacy as it formulates and promotes its fiscal, domestic, and foreign policies. His name is watchword for campus conservatives who regard him in a way that borders on hero worship. Conservative media pundits often equate the term "Reagan-esque" with personal honor, fiscal rectitude, and unqualified success in dealing with foreign ...

Using Costa Rica as a example, Longley carefully examines the development of the successful relationship between a nonindustrialized country and the United States, revealing the complex forces at work in resistance and accommodation.During World War II and the immediate postwar era, both the United States and Costa Rica experienced dramatic changes. The United States assumed world leadership and the accompanying responsibilities; Costa Rica encountered far-reaching difficulties tha...

Now in its second edition, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam provides a fresh approach to understanding the American combat soldier’s experience in Vietnam by focusing on the day-to-day experiences of front-line troops.The book delves into the Vietnam combat soldier’s experience, from the decision to join the army, life in training and combat, and readjusting to civilian life with memories of war. By utilizing letters, oral histories, and memoirs of actual vet...

Winner: New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, History book - Arizona subjectIn 1966, nine young men left the Arizona desert mining camp of Morenci to serve their country in the far-flung jungles of Vietnam, in danger zones from Hue to Khe Sanh. Ultimately, only three survived. Each battled survivor’s guilt, difficult re-entries into civilian life, and traumas from personally experiencing war—and losing close friends along the way.Such stories recurred throughout A...

Equally appealing for classroom use and general readers, this book provides a fresh approach to understanding the American combat soldier's experience in Vietnam that integrates such topics as the political culture, the experiences of training, the actual Vietnam experience, and the "homecoming."

1968 was an unprecedented year in terms of upheaval on numerous scales: political, military, economic, social, cultural. In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin ...

Helicopter pilots in Vietnam kidded one another about being nothing but glorified bus drivers. But these “rotor heads” saved thousands of American lives while performing what the Army classified as the most dangerous job it had to offer. One in eighteen did not return home. Tom A. Johnson flew the UH-1 “Iroquois” — better known as the “Huey” — in the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion of the First Air Cavalry Division. From June 1967 through June 1968, he accumulated an astonishin...

This is the report of an American Paratrooper, Infantry, boots on the ground, in Viet Nam in the mid 1960s. It is not a romanticized, sanitized, fantasized Hollywood version of ground combat. It is a description of life on the ground for your military grandfathers, fathers, uncles and brothers. When they returned from Viet Nam, this is not what they talked about. It was too painful, too raw, too uncivilized and too inhuman. The accumulated fear and pain of a full years tour of duty was ove...

Ed Rasimus straps the reader into the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber in his engaging account of the Rolling Thunder campaign in the skies over North Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1968, more than 330 F-105s were lost—the highest loss rate in Southeast Asia—and many pilots were killed, captured, and wounded because of the Air Force’s disastrous tactics. The descriptions of Rasimus’s one hundred missions, some of the most dangerous of the conflict, will satisfy anyone addicted to...