Encyclopedia Of The Korean War: A Political, Social, And Military History is deftly edited by Spencer C. Tucker and presents the reader with a thorough, comprehensive, in-depth, and deeply researched compendium of knowledge over the Korean conflict often referred to as "The Forgotten War." Entries are listed in A to Z format; black-and-white photographs sparsely illustrate the detailed, matter-of fact text. Strongly recommended for school and community library military history collections, the Encyclopedia Of The Korean War is a superbly presented reference for looking up details concerning people, places, weapons, politics, military actions and much more about this pivotal Asian conflict.

I enjoyed this book. Took me awhile to read but very enjoyable. Civil War on the high seas!

The history of Vietnam is obscure to most Westerners, at least prior to the Indo-China war of the fifties. This book attempts to fill that gap, and provide a short overview of the history of the nation over the last thousand years or so. Given that it's a short book (text runs to just over 200 pages) it does a good job.

Vietnam has been wracked by wars and conquests during most of the period covered by the book, and make no mistake, that's the author's focus. There's nothing about culture, literature, art, science, or ordinary life in this book: it's about politics, and warfare. The author spends one chapter dealing with the period pre-French conquest, and a second covering the period of French colonialism. The rest of the book covers the Vietnam Wars from 1946-1975, with a brief chapter after chronicling the country's history since the end of the war.

This is a good book, given its limited scope. The author has much to say about the war, most of it critical of American and South Vietnamese leadership. Hey, they did lose the war! The book also doesn't flinch from recounting atrocities by both sides, recounting them judiciously, and not taking sides.

If I have a criticism of the book, it's that it's too short. Two hundred pages doesn't do justice to the history of the war at less than an overview level, and trying to fit the last thousand years in there too was perhaps a bit much. I found myself wishing for more.

As someone who grew up during the Vietnam era, I wanted to read a book that would give me some understanding of what went on during the Vietnam war. I was a bit too young to really comprehend the current events as they were happening but too old for the Vietnam war to be covered in the history books I studied in school.

This book provides a good, succinct overview of the military aspects of the war. While there are allusions to events outside the military realm (the protests back in the U.S., Kennedy's assasination, etc.) the focus is definitely on the war itself. While the main focus is on the period in which the U.S. was involved in Vietnam, a significant part of the book is devoted to setting the context for that period (wars in Vietnam during ancient times and, especially the French Indo-China wars). There is also a short section on what happened after the U.S. left Vietnam. This context is interesting since the author points out how many of the mistakes made by the U.S. had been made by others during earlier times.

The book is quite brief (204 pages), so the author does not go into great depth on anything. For example, the My Lai massacre takes up only a very brief paragraph. If you're looking for an in depth analysis of the war, you would probably be better off with another book. However, as a brief overview, I thought the book was quite well done.

This is a very good book, especially for a more passive reader of history. It is relatively short and sticks to the major events during the war and does not get into meticulous details. The format is standardized with each chapter focusing on a particular year. The majority of each focues on the Western front but each chapter also details events on the Eastern, Italian, and Naval fronts. For anyone looking to increase their knowledge of WWI, I would recommend reading this first and if a particular event, campaign, etc. interests you, go get another book specifically written on that topic.

Before reading this book I knew very little about WWI, so it is impossible for me to judge how accurate this history is. However, Tucker seems to me to have covered pretty much all the major aspects of WWI, including the causes of the war, the political situation in the primary countries involved, the social effects of the war, the details of the peace settlement, and of course the actual fighting. To be honest, I didn't warm up to this book at first; although Tucker does a good job of keeping the action moving, I found it not to be very compelling due to a lack of detail. However, either the book started getting better or I became more used to his style; I'm not sure which. In any case, I felt that I learned a lot about this war and I gained a better appreciation for the enormous impact that this war had in shaping the history of the world in the twentieth century. Just to give one small example: the WWI peace settlement created the new nation of Yugoslavia, which forced the Serbs, Croats and Muslims to share the same nation which, in turn, resulted in a bloodbath in the 1990s. This book is definitely focused on the big picture. This is no "Day in the Life of a WWI Soldier" kind of book. The one image that did stick with me, however, was that of the British soldiers, mostly raw recruits, kicking a ball back and forth between them as they casually walked across no man's land at the Battle of the Somme. Most of them would be dead within minutes. For the most part, however, Tucker doesn't have to give details; it is easy enough to imagine the horrors of this war.

I picked this book up as it was mentioned several times as an alternative to Keegan's book on the First World War. It is, as claimed, very clipped and concise, almost too much so for me. There was so much going on in this war that I really didn't want to speed through it. However it is a good book and well recommended to anyone who wants a no nonsense accounting of what happened 1914-18.