Research Guides: History 97M: Vietnam Wars, 1945-1975 (Winter 2018, Robinson): Books

Finding Books

To find books in the UCLA Library and beyond, use the following catalogs.

UC Library Search This link opens in a new window
Contains information about materials owned by the UCLA Library and other UCLA collections. Includes holdings and location information but does not contain actual articles or citations for them.

When searching for books, there are a few useful starting strategies to keep in mind:

Searching a library catalog is different from searching Google or full text databases. The data provided is usually quite basic and includes title, author, subject, and sometimes table of contents. You may need to broaden your search or try alternate keywords (e.g., synonyms or related terms) before finding books on a particular topic.
Most library catalogs DO NOT contain articles or article indexing. Instead, they will tell you if the library has a subscription to a specific journal or magazine and if this includes any electronic access. Use an article database to find specific journal articles.
If you already have a relevant book or article in hand, use its bibliography to find other sources on the same topic.
If you find a relevant book in the catalog, look at the subject headings (under Subject(s)). Most books are assigned subject headings, and if you click on a heading, it will lead you to a list of books on that same topic.
If you have the call number of a relevant book, you can also look in the stacks and browse through nearby books. As books are given call numbers by subject, the books near it are often on the same topic.
Do a subject or title search, instead of a keyword search, if you get too many results. To start with, search for "Vietnam War" or "Indochinese War." Searching for "Vietnam--History--1975" as Subject will also yield many items.

Note: Due to major space restrictions in the Library, some materials may be located at the Southern Regional Library Facility, or SRLF. These can usually be requested via the UCLA Library Catalog and are usually available for pickup within 48 hours at one of the UCLA Libraries. If the Library does not own a book, it can usually be requested through interlibrary loan.

The surest way to find books is to search the UCLA Library catalog and other online catalogs. The left tab links to and gives a description of the various available catalogs. The middle tab gives tips for general book searching. Here are some other tips for locating and evaluating books:

How to Read a Call Number

Young Research Library Building Guide: Check to see where your call number is located.

Powell Library Map: Check to see where your call number is located.

How to Evaluate Books

Featured Books

The UCLA Library has numerous books related to various aspects of the Vietnam War. The following sampling shows the different takes, from personal narratives and biographies to protest movements and criticism to literature and art. The best way to find books is to go to Advanced Search and search for "Vietnam War" as subject AND whatever aspect you're interested in (e.g., narratives, protest, literature, women, politics, etc.) as keyword.

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class="s-lg-book clearfix" id="s-lg-content-38774862" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 10px;"> class="s-lg-book-props" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Armed with Abundance by Meredith Lair; Meredith H. Lair class="dropdown pad-left-med s-lg-content-edit" id="s-lg-admin-edit-content-link-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; margin-top: -4px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 15px; display: inline;">

class="s-lg-book-prop-callno" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Call Number: DS558.2 .L35 2011 (YRL)

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Dangerous grounds : antiwar coffeehouses and military dissent in the Vietnam era by David L. Parsons class="dropdown pad-left-med s-lg-content-edit" id="s-lg-admin-edit-content-link-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; margin-top: -4px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 15px; display: inline;">

class="s-lg-book-prop-callno" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Call Number: YRL, DS559.62.U6 P37 2017

Memoirs

The following are personal memoirs and letters (primary sources) that can be in the UCLA Library's collections. To find more, try searching "vietnam war" and "personal narratives" in the library catalog.

Best we could do : an illustrated memoir by Thi Bui National bestseller ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family's journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui.   This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves.   At the heart of Bui's story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent--the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home.   In what Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls "a book to break your heart and heal it," The Best We Could Do brings to life Thi Bui's journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.
Call Number: Powell Reserves, PN6728.B85 B48 2017
ISBN: 9781419718779
Bloods by Wallace Terry A "New York Times" Notable Book, his classic, powerful book--a nationally bestselling firsthand account of 20 African-American men who served in the Vietnam War--is available once again.
Call Number: YRL, DS559.5 .B56 1984
ISBN: 0394530284
Central highlands : a North Vietnamese journal of life on the Hò̂ Chí Minh Trail, 1965-1973 by Lê Cao Đài ; annotated translation by Lady Borton
Call Number: YRL, DS559.5 .L413 2004
Dear America : letters home from Vietnam by New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission; edited by Bernard Edelman This anthology consists of 208 letters, poems, clippings, and diary entries written by American servicemen in Vietnam.
Call Number: YRL, DS559.5 .D43 1985
ISBN: 0393019985
Last night I dreamed of peace : the diary of Đặng Thùy Trâm by translated by Andrew X. Pham At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and of her challenges in the face of the war’s ceaseless fury. The American officer who discovered the diary soon after Dr. Tram’s death was under standing orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, “Don’t burn this one. . . . It has fire in it already.” Against regulations, the officer preserved the diary and kept it for thirty-five years. In the spring of 2005, a copy made its way to Dr. Tram’s elderly mother in Hanoi. The diary was soon published in Vietnam, causing a national sensation. Never before had there been such a vivid and personal account of the long ordeal that had consumed the nation’s previous generations. Translated by Andrew X. Pham and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances FitzGerald,Last Night I Dreamed of Peaceis an extraordinary document that narrates one woman’s personal and political struggles. Above all, it is a story of hope in the most dire of circumstances—told from the perspective of our historic enemy but universal in its power to celebrate and mourn the fragility of human life.
Call Number: YRL, DS559.44 .D36 2007
ISBN: 9780307347374
Letters from Vietnam by Bill Adler (editor)
Call Number: YRL, DS557.A69 A23
Mekong diaries : Viet Cong drawings & stories, 1964-1975 by Sherry Buchanan ; with Nguyen Toan Thi, Tran Thi Huynh Nga & Nam Nguyen In May 1965, vice president Hubert Humphrey declared that “the Viet Cong has committed the most unbelievable acts of terrorism the world has ever known.” And throughout the long conflict in Vietnam, Americans similarly demonized the enemy fighters as reds, gooks, and fanatical killers. Offering a radically different view of these supposedly savage soldiers, Mekong Diaries presents never-before-published drawings, poems, letters, and oral histories by ten of the most celebrated Viet Cong war artists. These guerrilla artists—some military officers and some civilians—lived clandestinely with the fighters, moving camp alongside them, going on reconnaissance missions, and carrying their sketchbooks, ink, and watercolors into combat. Trained by professors from the Hanoi Institute of Fine Arts who journeyed down the perilous Ho Chi Minh Trail to ensure a pictorial history of the war, they recorded battles and events from Operation Junction City to Khe Sanh to the Tet Offensive. They also sketched as the spirit moved them, rendering breathtaking landscapes, hut and bunker interiors, activities at base camps, troops on the move, portraits for the families of fallen soldiers, and the unimaginable devastation that the conflict left in its wake. Their collective record—which Sherry Buchanan skillfully compiles here—is an extraordinary historical and artistic document of people at war. As such, it serves as a powerful response to the self-centeredness of American accounts of Vietnam, filling a profound gap in our national memory by taking us into the misunderstood worlds of those whom we once counted among our worst enemies.
Call Number: Arts, NC334.V5 B83 2008
ISBN: 9780226078304
Những tá̂m ảnh trở vè̂ : ảnh, thư từ, nhật ký chié̂n tranh của liệt sĩ Nguyẽ̂n Văn Giá by Nguyẽ̂n Văn Giá
Call Number: SRLF, DS559.5 .N5874 2005
No other road to take : memoir of Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Định by Mai V. Elliott (Translator) The memoir of a woman whose strength, courage, and intelligence had a profound impact on Vietnamese history. Not simply a participant in the Viet Minh resistance against the French, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Dinh was also an active leader who organized the uprising in Ben Tre province against the Diem regime, was appointed to the leadership committee of the National Liberation Front (NLF), and seved as Chairman of the South Vietnam Women's Liberation Association. The oppressive policies of Diem and the problems of civil war and American involvement are described with powerful immediacy-effectively illustrating the patriotic fervor and determination of those she fought with and helped lead.
Call Number: YRL, DS503 .C81 no.102
ISBN: 087727102X
Vietnamerica : a family's journey by G. B. Tran A superb new graphic memoir in which an inspired artist/storyteller reveals the road that brought his family to where they are today: Vietnamerica. GB Tran is a young Vietnamese American artist who grew up distant from (and largely indifferent to) his family's history. Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past--and to focus on their children's future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father's remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America--a foreign land they couldn't even imagine--where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation. In telling his family's story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention--and of the gift of the American immigrants' dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection--and a new graphic-memoir classic.
Call Number: Powell Graphic Literature Collection, E184.V53 T715 2010
ISBN: 9780345508720