Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War

Page 397 ends with an entry on Ticket Punching, so Ticket Punching is the caption at the top of the page. Of the nine entries on that page, I was most familiar with 365 Days, a book by Ronald J. Glasser, a U.S. Army Medical Corps physician who treated burn patients in Japan. There is also an entry for Strom Thurmond, a U.S. Senator since 1954, on that page. All that page 397 says about Thot Not, Operation is "See Daniel Boone Operations." Daniel Boone was a Special Forces thing in Cambodia. Ultimately Thot Not was arrived at as the perfect description for such people who, being "dressed as peasants or in unrecognizable uniforms, went into Cambodia to gather intelligence or to sabotage communist installations at the Southern end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, despite U.S. law forbidding operations in countries not at war with the United States." (p. 88). The entry for Operation Arc Light covers almost a page, from the first strike on 18 June 1965, dropped from B-52s flying above 30,000 feet, to the last on 18 August 1973. I had missed seeing the effective strikes against NVA forces at Khe Sanh in 1968 and Pleiku and An Loc in 1972 when they happened, and only visited one of those sites in the highly exciting time in between those events. There are only eleven lines in the entry for Fonda, Jane, not counting the "See also: Hawks and Doves; Teach-Ins." (p. 131). The entry on Free-Fire Zones is longer, and includes the information that "After 1965, the Pentagon renamed the zones `specific strike zones,'" (p. 138), but I was in one after 1969 and still think that the army was calling them Free-Fire Zones. I was too close to Pinkville to know what the Pentagon was thinking about a lot of things, so this book contains a number of revelations, even for me. Also from Washington, D.C., Appendix E has the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Public Law 88-408; 78 Stat. 384 which clearly stated, "the United States is assisting the peoples of southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area." (p. 543) Appendix F on pages 545-578 contains the text of the Paris Peace Accords~27 January 1973, and I might read this some day to see if it says anything about American bodies, a subject on which there is no entry in the main part of the Dictionary, but which has been the subject of much diplomatic discussion since the Accords were agreed to, and articles in the press always seemed a bit vague about what the elements of the agreement were. This book is a tiny additon to the level of recognition of history as a context and part of American culture, but is a bit heavy on the items of controversy which mattered as much as anything about Vietnam, which is one of those things which has never really been subject to agreement.

Marc Leepson and Helen Hannaford have just edited a reference work titled "Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War." This 600-page volume is an excellent addition to a growing library of Vietnam War reference books that include: John S. Bowman's "The Vietnam War: An Almanac." New York: World Almanac Publications, 1985; Philip K. Jason. "The Vietnam War in Literature: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticisms." Pasadena, California and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Salem Press, 1992; Stanley I. Kutler. "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996; John Newman, David A. Willson, David J. DeRose, Stephen Hidalgo, and Nancy J. Kendall. "Vietnam War Literature." Lanham, Md. & London: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996; James Olson. "Dictionary of the Vietnam War." New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1987; Linda Reinberg. "In the Field: The Language of the Vietnam War." New York, Oxford: Facts on File, 1991; Harry G. Summer, Jr. "Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War." Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1995; Carl Singleton. "Vietnam Studies: An Annotated Bibliography." Lanham, Md. & London: The Scarecrow Press; and Pasadena, Calif. & Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1997; Spencer C. Tucker, editor. "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social and Military History." Santa Barbara, California, Denver, Colorado, Oxford, England: ABC-Clio, 1998. Leepson and Hannaford's work contains 1,561 encyclopedic entries with the standard "see" and "see also" cross references, eight appendices, and fourteen maps. Central to the essence and ambitions of the book are the contributions of fifty-two scholars whose comments provide bedrock information on an immense array of subjects. The dictionary's specific entries vary in length from a few words for topics such as "jungle boots" and "Rome Plow," to more extensive two-plus page discussions of key items like "Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)," "Marines," and "People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN)." Leepson and Hannaford have done a commendable job of boiling down an overwhelming amount of information into one useable, quick-reference volume. They admit that their dictionary is not "a definitive account" of the war. (p. v) There is no such work. Yet their result is a welcome addition to the massvie body of literature dealing with a war for which we are steadily compiling layer upon layer of books, government documents, videos, films, journal articles, conference papers, and electronic data-base sources. While those interested in the Vietnam War often debate the conflict heatedly in terms of cause and legacies, accuracy of information, and analytical framework, there can be no doubt that the Vietnam generation has been extraordinarily productive in creating a rich corpus of Vietnam War works for future generations to access and evaluate. "Webste

As a Vietnam War veteran, college reference librarian and instructor of a class on the Vietnam War, I was thrilled to discover Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vienam War, edited by Marc Leepson. Marc had e-mailed me many months ago and told me about this project and had asked me to help him with some of the fact verification, which I was happy to do, but I had forgotten all about it by the time I saw the book advertised. As a reference librarian, I especially appreciate the clear cross-references, the maps and the text of the Paris Peace Accords which is included in Appendix F. Unlike most dictionaries of the Vietnam War, this book has many entries on Asian political leaders important to the war. For example, see the entry on Souvanna Phouma. Writers, such as Tim O'Brien, also get excellent entries which list their important work. For a bias free, one volume reference book on the Vietnam War, you can't go wrong with this one.

I have been teaching a Vietnam War history course for five years and have always wanted to have such a concise, well-conceived, and accurate reference book as the Dictionary of the Vietnam War. Controversy surrounds the war and our involvement--this is not unusual since the Vietnam War was one of the most devastating emotional events in American history. Due to this fact, often times the struggles to deal with the legacies of the war venture off into directions that are not productive and do not promote further understanding and healing. In my opinion, the entries that I checked in this book are well written, informative, and do not convey any particular bias. I will use this book and will recommend it to my students.Dr. Bruce Solheim, Professor of History