Machine generated contents note: Abbreviations and Acronyms -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Earl H. Tilford, Jr. -- Introduction -- Marc Jason Gilbert -- One Victory by Other Means: The Foreign Policy -- of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam -- William J. Duiker -- Two Fighting without Allies: The International -- Dimensions of America's Defeat in Vietnam -- George C. Herring -- Three Why the South Won the American War in Vietnam -- Robert K Brigham -- Four How America's Own Military Performance -- in Vietnam Aided and Abetted the "Norths" Victory -- Jeffrey Record -- Five Impatience, Illusion, and Asymmetry: -- Intelligence in Vietnam -- John Prados -- Six The Cost of Losing the "Other War" in Vietnam -- Marc Jason Gilbert -- Seven The Role of Economic Culture in -- Victory and Defeat in Vietnam -- Andrew J. Rotter -- Eight "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, -- Ho Chi Minh Is Gonna Win!" -- Marilyn Young -- Nine Hall of Mirrors -- Lloyd Gardner -- About the Authors -- Index
"World history explores the human past, around the globe, to help us understand the world we live in today. It seeks to identify how major forces, like patterns of migration or world trade, have developed over time. It explores the cultures and political institutions of different regions, to help explain commonalities and differences. World history builds on a growing body of historical scholarship, some of which has truly altered the picture of the past. It involves a rich array of stories and examples of human variety, intriguing in themselves. It helps develop skills that are vital not just to the history classroom, but to effective operation in a global society-skills like comparing different societies, appreciating various viewpoints, and identifying big changes and continuities in the human experience. Always, however, it uses the past as a prologue to the present. World historians argue that no one society, past or present, can be understood without reference to other societies and to larger global forces. They argue, even more vigorously, that the present-which clearly involves relationships that embrace the whole world-cannot be grasped without a sense of the global historical record. From its first edition, World Civilizations: The Global Experience has aimed at capturing a truly global approach by discussing and comparing major societies and focusing on their interactions. The goal is to present a clear factual framework while stimulating analysis about global contacts, regional patterns, and the whole process of change and continuity on a world stage. This kind of world history, focused on the development over time of the forces that shape the world today, helps students make sense of the present and prepare to meet the challenges of the future. It is hard to imagine a more important topic. Embracing the whole world's history obviously requires selectivity and explicit points of emphasis. This text gains coherence through decisions about time, about place, and about topic. In all three cases, the book encourages analysis, relating facts to vital issues of interpretation. Through analysis and interpretation students become active, engaged learners, rather than serving as passive vessels for torrents of historical facts. Underpinning analysis, the issues of time, place, and topic are the three keys to an intelligible global past"--
