The war within : America's battle over Vietnam / Tom Wells ; with a foreword by Todd Gitlin.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam is a painfully engrossing and popularly written account of how the battle on the home front ended America's least popular war. This absorbing narrative, hailed by critics of every persuasion, is the fruit of over a decade's worth of research: the author sifted through mountains of government documents, press coverage, and transcripts of interviews he conducted with virtually all of the key players, both inside the U.S. government and among the dissenters who eventually brought the war to an end. In these pages the antiwar era comes to life through the words of scores of participants, both the famous and the forgotten, who speak with candor and passion about this tumultuous period. A remarkable story of a powerful grassroots movement and its influence on officials in Washington.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This history of protest activities in the United States during the Vietnam War is an important addition to the field. It complements such recent titles as Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield's An American Ordeal ( LJ 4/1/90), Charles Chatfield's The American Peace Movement (Twayne, 1992), and Melvin Small's Give Peace a Chance (Syracuse Univ. Pr, 1992). Wells concludes that activists failed to recognize their enormous impact on Congress, the White House, and U.S. public opinion and that factional squabbling within Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and similar groups was self-destructive. While the hundreds of interviews with leading antiwar activists and former government officials help show the anguish of both groups, Wells's study ultimately provides a comprehensive look at the peace movement between the years 1965 and 1975. Appendixes include a chronology of events, a list of abbreviations from the period, a list of those interviewed, and a select bibliography. Highly recommended for most libraries.-- Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Wells's comprehensive examination of domestic opposition to the war in Vietnam chronicles the successes of the anti-war movement. Despite an intensive effort by the U.S. government to disrupt and divide it, the movement of 1964-1973 played a major role in restricting, deescalating and then ending our involvement in Indochina. Wells, a freelance writer, explores the acrimonious debates among high-level hawks and doves in Washington. He analyzes the effect of the movement on war policy, showing how it hindered air and ground operations during the Johnson administration, exerted a substantial impact on Nixon's Indochina policy, had a direct bearing on the deterioration of troop morale and discipline (which provided additional impetus for troop withdrawal), and ultimately led to the Watergate scandal which, as Wells tells it, played a pivotal role in ending the war. This absorbing drama filled with vivid characterizations is an impressive work of scholarship. Photos. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Writing from the viewpoint of a generation removed from the conflict, Wells brings to life the antiwar movement's struggle against the Vietnam war and the efforts of the Johnson and Nixon administrations to counter the protests from 1965 to 1975. In addition to previously published materials, Wells uses new documents and recent interviews of many participants on both sides of the issue. Wells makes a solid if not conclusive argument that the antiwar movement had a significant impact on the conduct of the war by both administrations and on the decision to bring US involvement to an end. President Johnson's decision to slowly escalate and ultimately seek negotiations, and Nixon's decisions to delay certain military actions, to carry out some actions secretly, and to implement the "Vietnamization" of the war were substantially influenced by policy makers' concerns about the growing social strife at home. The actions that they took against the antiwar movement were the roots of Watergate, which Wells argues would not have occurred without the war and the antiwar movement. Although this work does not go into the roots of the antiwar movement before 1965, as did Charles DeBenedetti's An American Ordeal (1993), it is a very valuable contribution to the study of that divisive era. All levels. E. T. Smith; Barry University

Kirkus Book Review

Immense, painstakingly researched, painfully engrossing account of how the battle on America's home front ended its longest and least popular war. Wells (formerly Univ. of San Francisco, Mills College) makes clear at the outset where he stands on the historical issue of the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement; he has ``made no effort to conceal'' his opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Moreover, he argues that the antiwar movement was no marginal phenomenon. Because American warmongers took it seriously (particularly Richard Nixon after Lyndon Johnson was driven from office), it had a pervasive effect on the war effort itself, among other things compelling President Nixon to ``phase out'' the draft and ``Vietnamize'' the war. In addition, Nixon's lack of understanding of the antiwar movement led him to try to suppress opposition so ruthlessly (often employing provocateurs and other dirty tricks) that he overreached and eventually toppled from office. Wells discusses the internecine conflicts among antiwar activists and the leftist polarization of many in the movement as the war dragged on and as many, formerly moderate opponents of the war came to the conclusion that revolution was necessary to end it. While the movement's diversity was its strength as it expanded from a radical fringe into a mainstream political force, internal strife among religious groups, Trotskyites, and others that shared little more than opposition to American war aims split the movement apart. Although the coalition splintered and seemed ultimately to founder, Wells concludes that the antiwar movement's long-term contributions to American democracy, as well as to ending the war itself, were substantial. A balanced, absorbing, tragic narrative of the massive groundswell of popular revulsion that eventually thwarted the directors of America's war in Southeast Asia. (47 b&w photographs- -not seen)