A People's History Of The Vietnam War (New Press People's History)
Explicitly addressing contemporary protesters aggrieved by World Bank meetings, the author reviews the war on which he cut his radical teeth, the conflict in Vietnam. With an inspirational purpose, Neale's work cannot technically be considered a "history," because its text largely synthesizes secondary sources; nevertheless, its point of view is extant if not widespread and, therefore, should be represented in library collections. Neale's is left of left, and he couches his version of the Vietnam War in the Marxist termsruling classandclass struggle. Thus the war originated in landlords' oppression of peasants in Vietnam (not from the North's relentless pressure on the South), and the American ruling class intervened partly to uphold anti-communism at home--specifically, to keep unions down and socialism suffocated, according to Neale. He further credits the antiwar movement with ending the war, holding forth his example to encourage his readers' current causes. Though energetic in its outrage, Neale's work illustrates history as refracted through his own ideology.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.