"America in Vietnam, a Documentary History"

By: William Appleman Williams, Thomas McCormick, Lloyd Gardner, and Walter Lafaber

Word Count: 1,095

In "America in Vietnam" the authors' purpose is to help the reader reach their own conclusions by providing documents about the tragedy of American intervention in Vietnam. The authors achieve this goal with a thorough series of essays about each particular conflict in Vietnam. These series of unbiased documents allow the reader to develop his own opinion although the introduction preceding each essay subtly guides the reader to a certain opinion. Appleman Williams states "A philosopher might classify American intervention in Vietnam as a particularly revealing example of the general proposition of Misplaced Concreteness. We allowed a secondary issue to become a primary issue." (Page 12). This is an example of the opinion Williams holds but impose the opinion harshly on the reader.

This book covers in...