A slim, detailed volume on a key moment in the Vietnam War, featuring battlescenes, maps and archive photography. The 1968 Tet Offensive was the decisive battle for Vietnam. Masterminded by the brilliant North Vietnamese General, Vo Nguyen Giap, it was intended to trigger a general uprising in South Vietnam. However, the bloody fighting for Saigon, Hue and other cities actually resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the North. In this excellent assessment of the key battle of the Vietnam conflict, James Arnold details the plans and forces involved and explains how, despite the outcome of the battle, the American people and their leaders came to perceive the war for Vietnam as lost.

The author of Black Hawk Down vividly recounts a pivotal Vietnam War battle in this New York Times bestseller: “An extraordinary feat of journalism”. —Karl Marlantes, Wall Street Journal In Hue 1968, Mark Bowden presents a detailed, day-by-day reconstruction of the most critical battle of the Tet Offensive. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched attacks across South Vietnam. The lynchpin of this campaign was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital. 10,000 troops descended from hidden camps and surged across the city, taking everything but two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the siege, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city block by block, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the United States and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction

"By 1968, the government of South Vietnam, backed by U.S. advisers, had been fighting Communist Viet Cong insurgents and their patrons in neighboring North Vietnam for fourteen years. It was a desperate struggle that pitted neighbor against neighbor and exacted a mounting toll in the form of casualties, refugees, and socioeconomic dislocation. In 1965, the United States had added its own ground combat troops to the struggle, thwarting the very real prospect of a Communist victory. Since that low point, the allies had been gradually gaining ground in an escalating conflict. In late January 1968, the Communist leadership in North Vietnam had launched a major offensive in a bid to change the situation in its favor. The widespread attacks, which began during the Tet new year holidays and continued on and off through September, failed miserably. The population of South Vietnam refused to rise up in support, and the Communists suffered enormous casualties. As the enemy aggression abated, the commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), General Creighton W. Abrams, believed the allies were poised to make significant gains. But time was not on his side. Although the allies had defeated the enemy militarily, the shock that the Communists had been able to launch such a massive strike after years of American involvement had undermined support for the war back in the United States. With peace talks under way in Paris, Abrams raced against the clock to give South Vietnam the best chance for survival before the inevitable withdrawal of U.S. troops"--Page 7

The chronicle of the year 1968 complete with civil rights marches, the Vietnam War, and the heyday of the counterculture.

During October 1967, the United States appeared to be making slow but steady gains against the Viet Cong insurgents and their North Vietnamese allies who were attempting to destroy the South Vietnamese government. Army General William C. Westmoreland, the chief of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), expected to get even better results in the coming year as more U.S. combat units joined his command, raising its maximum authorized strength to 525,000 personnel. MACV advisers continued to modernize the South Vietnamese armed forces and the effort to expand government authority in the countryside appeared to be gaining traction. The enemy was suffering enormous casualties and many of his troops were afflicted by malnutrition and disease. Hammered from the air by B-52 bombers and disrupted by allied ground sweeps, the Viet Cong base areas in South Vietnam were no longer the safe havens they once had been. Despite these gains, however, MACV's mission was far from complete. The enemy was disciplined and resourceful, sustained by a constant flow of arms and men from North Vietnam down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and guided by a party that was ruthlessly committed to national reunification on its own terms (see Map 1). Knowing that the American people were unwilling to support a costly and protracted war, which already had cost the lives of more than 15,000 Americans, Westmoreland keenly felt the need to accelerate his progress in 1968 "on all fronts-political, military, economic, and psychological."

Finalist for the 1971 National Book Award In early 1968, Communist forces in Vietnam launched a surprise offensive that targeted nearly every city, town, and major military base throughout South Vietnam. For several hours, the U.S. embassy in Saigon itself came under siege by Viet Cong soldiers. Militarily, the offensive was a failure, as the North Vietnamese Army and its guerrilla allies in the south suffered devastating losses. Politically, however, it proved to be a crucial turning point in America's involvement in Southeast Asia and public opinion of the war. In this classic work of military history and war reportage—long considered the definitive history of Tet and its aftermath—Don Oberdorfer moves back and forth between the war and the home front to document the lasting importance of this military action. Based on his own observations as a correspondent for the Washington Post and interviews with hundreds of people who were caught up in the struggle, Tet! remains an essential contribution to our understanding of the Vietnam War.