Retracing the confused pattern of planning for escalation of the Vietnam War, Moise reconstructs the events of the night of August 4, 1964, when the U.S. Navy destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy reported that they were under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Using declassified records and interviews with the participants, Moise demonstrates that there was no North Vietnamese attack; the original report was a genuine mistake.

The author examines the events of one August night in 1964, when U.S. ships were allegedly attacked by the North Vietnamese, leading to an escalation of U.S. involvement in the war, and demonstrates that the attack never took place. UP.

From the reviews of Nazi Germany "The best one-volume history of the Third Reich available.It fills a void which has existed for a long time and it will probably become the basic text for generations of students."-Walter Laqueur "An indispensable, compellingly readable political, military and social history of the Third Reich."-Publishers Weekly From the reviews of History of an Obsession "This is truly a significant work, for Fischer gives a balanced account of a complex subject, making it painfully clear just how Germany became capable of genocide." - Booklist "Fischer writes with a clear mastery of both primary and secondary sources. Synthesizing a wide spectrum of literature into a fine, scholarly work." - Library Journal No decade since the end of World War II has been as seminal in its historical significance as the 1960s. That stormy period unleashed a host of pent-up social and generational conflicts that had not been experienced since the Civil War: intense racial and ethnic strife, cold war terror, the Vietnam War, counter-cultural protests, controversial social engineering, and political rancor. Numerous studies on various aspects of these issues have been written over the past 35 years, but few have so successfully integrated the many-sided components into a coherent, synthetic, and reliable book that combines good storytelling with sound scholarly analysis. The main materials covered will be the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies; the Civil Rights movement; the Vietnam War and the protest it generated; the New Left, student radicals, and Black student militancy; and, finally, the counter-cultural side of the 60s: hippies, sex and Rock 'n' Roll.

The first major synthesis of the war since 2001, drawing upon a host of newly declassified documents, presidential tapes, and overlooked foreign sources to give the most comprehensive look to date of the war that still haunts America.

Now in its fourth edition, this highly successful global history of the twentieth century is written by four prominent international historians for first-year undergraduate level and upward. Using their thematic and regional expertise, the authors have produced an authoritative yet accessible and seamless account of the history of international relations in the last century, covering events in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. They focus on the history of relations between states and on the broad ideological, economic and cultural forces that have influenced the evolution of international politics over the last 120 years. The fourth edition is thoroughly updated to take account of the most recent research and global developments, including new material on the impact of the Trump administration on international politics, the rise of China under the leadership of Xi Jinping and the origins of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The book is supported by a fully revised companion website including links to further resources and self-testing material, which can be found at www.routledgelearning.com/internationalhistory20c.

The international law on the use of force is one of the oldest branches of international law. It is an area twinned with the emergence of international law as a concept in itself, and which sees law and politics collide. The number of armed conflicts is equal only to the number of methodological approaches used to describe them. Many violent encounters are well known. The Kosovo Crisis in 1999 and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 spring easily to the minds of most scholars and academics, and gain extensive coverage in this text. Other conflicts, including the Belgian operation in Stanleyville, and the Ethiopian Intervention in Somalia, are often overlooked to our peril. Ruys and Corten's expert-written text compares over sixty different instances of the use of cross border force since the adoption of the UN Charter in 1945, from all out warfare to hostile encounters between individual units, targeted killings, and hostage rescue operations, to ask a complex question. How much authority does the power of precedent really have in the law of the use of force?

The Folly of War is a hard-hitting, critical analysis of American wars in the 20th century that set a pattern for the early 21st century. Drawing on a wide rage of sources and rigorously marshaling the facts, the book concludes that these wars have been futile, unnecessary and foolish. Rejecting the Left's contention that American foreign policy has been driven by greedy corporate interests, the author starts from the premise that average Americans have supported these wars out of a will to do good" but have failed in that aim, and in the process done much harm. This is a disturbing book that raises questions about how we go to war, how we fight wars, and how we eventually lose wars. Many Americans viewed the military defeat in Vietnam as an aberration, interrupting a string of foreign military successes. This book sees that tragedy as part of a line of politically reckless engagements. Driven by a proud self assurance that is often termed American exceptionalism, the nation arms itself to the teeth and intrudes into every region, pacing on a treadmill of perpetual war to achieve perpetual peace. Writing Chapter 13, "The War on Terror - The Contrived War" in 2003, just as the Bush administration was making its fateful decision to invade Iraq, Schmidt concluded at that time that the discussion among the principals (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, etc.) was stacked with faulty information and the decision was made on an emotional level rather than a rational one. Further, he predicted that nothing good would come of the Iraq venture -- unfortunately that assessment was correct. One of the officials in the Bush White House who participated in the pre-war discussions, admitted the attack was irrational: "The only reason we went into Iraq is we were looking for somebody's ass to kick ... Afghanistan was too easy." (Days of Fire - Bush and Cheney in the White House, by Peter Baker, p 191, Doubleday, 2013). At the end of seven major wars and after one million American soldiers have been killed, we are no closer to the perfect security we seek.

A survey of the Vietnamese communist experience during the Vietnam War (1954-75) with a focus on high-level decision-making and military planning.