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Literature on the Korean War has been undergoing its latest revision since about , when the breakup of the Soviet Union began opening archival materials to researchers. Since any exhaustive recommendations for reading on the war are likely to be outdated with the publication of materials relying on the new archival releases, I have chosen to list several basic works dealing with aspects of the war that should give an outline of the subject but not be completely outdated by new revelations. It is a list of personal favorites and is not exhaustive. The serious student of the war will want to consult Lester H. Brune’s The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and Research (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, ) as well as Harry G. Summers Jr.’s Korean War Almanac (New York: Facts On File, ), bearing in mind that the accelerating pace of revelations on the war will outdate both. William Stueck, in The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), masterfully synthesizes myriad aspects of a war that the author argues forestalled World War III. The Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project is an invaluable source of information on and tentative interpretations of the war. The Wilson Center, located in Washington, D.C., publishes interim findings as they become available and sponsors a variety of meetings for the discussion of Cold War issues. For a general outline of the war, James L. Stokesbury’s A Short History of the Korean War (New York: William Morrow, ) is concise and useful . Matthew B. Ridgway wrote The Korean War: How We Met the Challenge ; How All-Out Asian War Was Averted; Why MacArthur Was Dismissed; Why Today’s War Objectives Must Be Limited (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday , ) as the American role in Vietnam was accelerating. In it he warned of how America’s experiences in Korea provided insights into the Suggestions for Further Reading phenomenon of limited war. It has stood the test of time better than some accounts by participants and supplements his shorter coverage in the six chapters of Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway (New York: Harper and Brothers, ) that deal with the war. Other general histories of the war abound; those most useful for the novice include Max Hastings ’s The Korean War (New York: Simon and Schuster, , for a British perspective, and Clay Blair’s The Forgotten War: America in Korea – (New York:Times Books, ), with its wealth of anecdotes. Both share a failing of many accounts of the war by emphasizing the first year of combat , when maneuver was predominant, giving inadequate coverage of the last two years, when stalemate and frustration were the norm. T. R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness (New York: MacMillan, ) is a vivid and readable account with considerable editorializing on America’s shortcomings in waging war. Doris M. Condit’s The Test of War, – (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, ), the second volume in the History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, gives insight into the policy makers and their view of the war. Volumes  and  of the History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—Walter S. Poole’s The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, – and Robert J. Watson’s The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, – (both Washington, D.C.: Office of Joint History , Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, )—provide perspectives from the highest levels of the U.S. military. Roy E. Appleman, who had access to oral and official accounts of the Korean War as one of the U.S. Army’s official historians, places Chipyong-ni in context in his masterful Ridgway Duels for Korea (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, ). The military services’ official histories are useful at recounting the deliberations and operations of the armed forces, although none avoids intermittent touches of parochialism. Little literature is available on Chinese forces, and details are often difficult to pin down. Coverage is most complete at the strategic level, where Chen Jian’s China’s road to the Korean War: The Making of the SinoAmerican Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, ) and Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ) give insights into the emerging interpretations. Shu Guang Zhang’s Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, – (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, ) outlines a philosophical interpretation of Chinese strategy, which Xiaobing Li, Allan R...

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