Essay 2 is worth 30% of your final grade. It should be 1,500 words in length (give or take 150
words), and should be submitted as a Word document via the relevant Turnitin dropbox on the
unit’s iLearn space by the end of Week 10 (11:55pm Sunday 13 October). Your question
prompt for Essay 2 is:
Why did Lyndon Johnson decide to escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War
between the end of 1963 and the middle of 1965?
Your essay should be based on (a) the following assigned readings (available via Leganto,
which in turn is available via our unit’s iLearn space):
• Michael H. Hunt, “‘That Bitch of a War,’” chap. 4 in Lyndon Johnson’s War: America’s
Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945–1968 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996), 72–107;
• Michael Lind, “Why Indochina Mattered: American Credibility and the Cold War,”
chap. 2 in Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most
Disastrous Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1999), 31–75;
• Fredrik Logevall, “Choosing War,” chap. 12 in Choosing War: The Lost Chance for
Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1999), 375–413;
• Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, “Policing the State in a Time of War,” chap. 2 in Hanoi’s War:
An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2012), 48–83;.
This is not a research essay, but rather an
essay designed to develop and test your analytical and writing skills
