Subject Guides: War, Society, & Culture: The Vietnam-American War: Home

Primary Documents

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Includes popular American magazines from the 1950s-1980s.

The Christian and Missionary Alliance
A source for Christian missionary efforts in Vietnam. Login: kellycannon@muhlenberg.edu; password: library
Encompass
Trexler Library's catalog, that may include published primary sources.
Foreign Relations of the United States
The Foreign Relations of the United States series, published by the State Department, is the single best compendium of US official primary sources on foreign affairs. There are several volumes on Vietnam.
Google Books
Includes the full text of publications now out of copyright, pre-1929.
Hathi Trust
Thousands of older books, useful as primary documents, scanned by libraries throughout the U.S.
MSU Vietnam Group Archive
“The MSU Vietnam Group Archive includes roughly 80,000 pages of digitized documents, maps, and images. Most of these materials date from 1955-1962, when Michigan State University led a range of USfunded technical assistance programs in South Vietnam for the purpose of producing a stable nonCommunist ally in Southeast Asia. These materials contain rare and valuable information about politics, economy, and society in South Vietnam during the critical decade from the country's formation in 1954 to the intensification of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s.
My Lai Courts Martial (1970)
Contains legal documents and testimonies relating to the trials of those involved in the My Lai Massacre in central Vietnam at the height of the war.

New York Times Digital Archive, 1851-4 years ago This link opens in a new window
Includes full text PDF images of the New York Daily Times (1851-1857) and the New York Times (1857- 4 years ago). Index searches within1851 to 1993 using The New York Times Index.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Includes full text of the following publications:
Chicago Defender (1909-1975)
The New York Times with Index (1851-2019)
The Philadelphia Inquirer (1860-2001)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (1786-2003)
The Washington Post (1877-2006)
U.S. Northeast Collection (1785-2010) (includes Morning Call and other regional papers)

Vietnam War Bibliography
An extensive list of primary documents about the war from all sides.
Vietnam War Era Ephemera Collection
Presents digital copies of 1960s era student protest flyers, posters, and other material. There is much related to opposition to the Vietnam War.
Vietnamese and Vietnamese American Literature
A list of books by Vietnamese and Vietnamese American authors in translation.
Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project
The Vietnam Project, administered out of Texas Tech University, is the single-largest archive of Englishlanguage documents about Vietnam. Many of these documents have been scanned and are now accessible through the project’s virtual archive. These documents cover virtually all aspects of American involvement in Vietnam, from the 1940s to the 1990s.
The Wilson Center Digital Archive
Documents on the Vietnam War, or the "American War" as it is called in Vietnam. These telegrams, minutes, and discussion notes range from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1970s, and come from Chinese, Soviet, Albanian, Vietnamese, and other Communist bloc archives.

A selection of primary documents published in books

Lam, Truong Buu. Colonialism Experienced: Vietnamese Writings on Colonialism, 1900-1931. Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
Tana, Li. Southern Vietnam Under the Nguyen: Documents on the Economic History of Cochinchina. Edited by Anthony Reid. Canberra: Singapore: Inst of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993.
Dutton, George Edson, Jayne Susan Werner, and John K. Whitmore, eds. Sources of Vietnamese Tradition. Introduction to Asian Civilizations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. (2 volumes)
Lawrence, Mark Atwood. The Vietnam War: An International History in Documents. 1 edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Tuck, Patrick J. N. French Catholic Missionaries and the Politics of Imperialism in Vietnam, 1857-1914: A Documentary Survey. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987.
Baez, Joan, Doan Van Toai. Portrait of the Enemy. The Other Side of Vietnam, Told Through Interviews with North Vietnamese, Former Vietcong and Southern Opposition Leaders. Random House, 1986.
Chanoff, David, Doan Van Toai, and Edward Miller. Vietnam: A Portrait of Its People at War. Reissue edition. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2009.

Subject headings in Encompass that elicit primary documents

Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Personal narratives, Vietnamese
Catholic Church—Missions—Vietnam—History—Sources
Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Sources
Vietnam War, 1961-1975—United States—Sources
Vietnam—Politics and government—20th century—Sources
Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Personal narratives

Authoritative Secondary Commentary in Books

Encompass Search
Encompass Search searches for books and other resources, first in our own library, and then beyond, in other research libraries.

Reference Works

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Hundreds of authoritative dictionaries, encyclopedias, fact books, guides, companions and more from respected publishers across dozens of major subject areas.

Scholarly Journals

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
A database of both scholarly and popular publications in a wide variety of disciplines and subject areas, including psychology. Most full text is linked directly in the database; otherwise use the Check for Full Text buttons to check for full text online or in the library.
America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
The definitive database of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to present, this database is without question the most important bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history.
Full text journals include American Historical Review, American 19th Century History, American Studies, Early American Studies, Journal of American Culture, Journal of American History, Journal of Early American History, and Journal of Military History.

Google Scholar
An open-access web crawler that looks for content it identifies as "scholarly." Emphasis is on books and journal articles. Intended as a "federated search" to search across disciplines (weighted toward sciences and social sciences). Not always full text. Check our Journal Locator (see above) to see if Muhlenberg has access to the full text.

Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing, abstracts, and selected full text of articles appearing in history journals, with emphasis on world history from 1450 to present (excluding the U.S. and Canada which are covered in America: History and Life). It includes citations to books, journal articles, and dissertations.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A substantive archive of about 3,000 full text scholarly journals plus scholarly books in the arts, humanities, social sciences and biological sciences. As an archive, there is typically a lag time of 3-5 years from publication until new issues appear in JSTOR. Journals include core titles from a variety of disciplines: history, economics, biology, and more.
MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Premier scholarly index, with numerous links to full text, to criticism in the areas of literature, language, linguistics, film studies, and folklore, published from 1920-present.

Search Google Scholar for Articles

Citing sources

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources.

Or visit the Online Writing Lab at Purdue.

For automated citation, try the shareware Zotero. Directions for installing Zotero here.

For help with annotated bibliographies, visit Purdue's Online Writing Lab for definitions and format of an annotation.

Articles and books via interlibrary loan

Articles and books not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan.