Advice and Support: The Early Years 1941-1960; The U. S. Army in Vietnam

New York: The Free Press, 1985. First Paperbk Edition. First Printing. Trade paperback. Very good. 391, wraps, illus., maps, footnotes, table, charts, bibliographical note, index, slight wear to cover edges. Ronald Harvey Spector (born January 17, 1943) is a military historian, who contributes to scholarly journals and also teaches history. He has been a Professor at the George Washington University. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the reserves. He was a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military history and taught at the University of Alabama. He was tasked to prepare a study of the Grenada operation. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University, and later gained a Ph.D from Yale University. Spector was a Senior Fulbright scholar in India from 1977 to 1978. He has taught at the National War College, the University of Alabama, and the U.S. Army War College. He has been on the faculty of The George Washington University in Washington, DC. Drawing on recently declassified Pentagon files and other official documents, the author concludes that gross ignorance of Vietnamese society, language, and culture, and a dogged Can-Do attitude in the field, prevented American advisory forces from realistically appraising either the viability of the South Vietnamese army or the soundness of the government it supported. Advice and Support describes the activities of the U.S. Army in Vietnam during World War II, military advice and assistance to the French government during the immediate postwar years, and the advisory program that developed after the Geneva Agreements of 1954. Its scope ranges from high-level policy decisions to low-echelon advisory operations in the field, presented against a background of relevant military and political developments. Useful not only as a study of military assistance but as a view of the Army as an agent of national policy, Ronald Spector's interesting book is a fitting introduction to the overall study of the conflict in Vietnam.