New Books In Southeast Asian Studies

As any scholar of the Vietnam War can tell you, the field doesn’t lack for study: it’s one of the most-studied fields for both military and diplomatic historians. And yet, for all of the scholarly attention it has received, there are understudied facets of this complicated, multilateral conflict, particularly in its early years, before American ground troops entered the country in large numbers. Jessica Elkind’s Aid Under Fire: Nation Building and the Vietnam War (University of Kentucky Press, 2016) does precisely this by examining U.S. development programs that tried to foster a viable South Vietnamese state in the 1950s and early 1960s. The outcomes of those disparate programs ultimately deepened a U.S. commitment to the Republic of South Vietnam and helped set the United States on the road to war. Dr. Elkind’s research was conducted using U.S. government sources, private collections from Michigan State University, and South Vietnamese government sources held in Ho Chi Minh City. Michigan State University