{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.022765598650927487, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.830466830466831, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: The Tet Offensive

The cover blurb for this collection asserts that the essays here 'are among the very first to seek to dispel the wishful thinking, analytical dogmas, and political agendas that have obscured past efforts to master this key turning point in Vietnamese and American history'. Clearly, any new publication needs to separate itself from what has gone before if it hopes to find an audience, but this is a particularly ambitious statement nonetheless. Certainly this collection does make a serious attempt to approach the subject from several new directions, bringing together essays on the Vietnamese viewpoint and on the power struggles between the USSR, China, North Vietnam and the NLF (National Liberation Front) with those that examine the American side of the equation. Yet overall America remains the main object of consideration here, as in so many studies of the Vietnam conflict, with eight out of the thirteen essays focusing on American actions and concerns. Consequently, the declaration that this collection is going to provide a new dimension on the 'key turning point' of the Vietnam War needs to be tempered by the fact that this is ground that has been fought over many times before, and usually with a specific agenda in mind. America did not win in Vietnam. Unable, therefore, to take all the credit, her historians have too often tried to make her carry all the blame. More recently, studies of the war, and of Tet in particular, have worried away with increasing desperation at what went wrong and why. This collection, in the main, has a similar agenda, but one enlivened by some genuinely original material and approaches. The introductory essay is especially good at setting out the main areas of disagreement over Tet, and in offering a brief resume of each chapter's contents. The collection the editors call it an 'anthology' is divided into two sections, although this division is not made explicit in the work's layout. The first part covers the background to and the 'whys and wherefores' of Tet, and the second examines such matters as US intelligence, the battle of Khe Sanh and the air war. The chapters themselves are extremely varied in terms of length and, consequently, depth of analysis. Larry Berman's opening chapter concentrates on Johnson and his cabinet in the period leading up to Tet. Although very