Advice and Support; The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941-1960

New York, N.Y.: The Free Press, 1985. First Free Press Paperback Edition [stated]. Second printing [stated]. Trade Paperback. Good. xxii, [2], 391, [1] pages. Cover wear noted. Includes Foreword, Preface to the Free Press Edition, Assessment, Footnotes. Bibliographical Note, Index, Table, Charts, Maps, and Illustrations. Topics covered include The American Discovery of Vietnam; The Franco--Viet Minh War; and Going It Alone. Also includes 86 black and white illustrations in the text. The author of a widely red history of the Vietnam conflict observed that "in a sense we discovered Vietnam in 1954." This American discovery came about as a result of the imminent collapse of French power in Indochina. The factors involved in the French collapse went back many years, and in some respects centuries, before the 1950s. These factors, while clear enough to present-day historians, were not at all obvious to the American leaders of the 1950s, who for the most part lacked a knowledge of Vietnamese culture and history. Ronald Harvey Spector (born January 17, 1943) is a military historian, who contributes to scholarly journals and also teaches history. He has been a Professor at the George Washington University. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University, and later gained a Ph.D from Yale University. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the reserves. He was a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military history and taught at the University of Alabama. He was tasked to prepare a study of the Grenada operation. Advice and Support describes the activities of the U.S. Army in Vietnam during World War II, military advice and assistance to the French government during the immediate postwar years, and the advisory program that developed after the Geneva Agreements of 1954. Its scope ranges from high-level policy decisions to low-echelon advisory operations in the field, presented against a background of relevant military and political developments. Useful not only as a study of military assistance but as a view of the Army as an agent of national policy, Ronald Spector's interesting book is a fitting introduction to the overall study of the conflict in Vietnam.