Volume 16, Number 6 • June 1999

Primary Source Media Launches The Vietnam Era CD-ROM

Like previous American Journey titles, The Vietnam Era features rare primary source materials organized around thematic essays. Hyperlinks, timelines, maps, picture albums, content lists, and flexible full-text searches facilitate access to hundreds of documents and images, according to the company.

“The Vietnam Era provides librarians and educators with unique materials from a recent period that students find fascinating,” said David Lucas, president and CEO of Primary Source Media. “This outstanding collection of primary records encourages student inquiry into the complex issues and emotions surrounding this difficult time in American history.”

The Vietnam Era presents the swirl of events that surrounded America’s involvement in Vietnam, tracing the meeting of East and West—from the bloody French-Indochina War to the American entry into Vietnam, from Johnson’s escalation of American forces to Nixon’s decision to bomb Cambodia, from America’s final withdrawal to the renewal of American-Vietnamese relations. The collection also tells the story of America’s coming of age in the “war at home” as well as the war overseas. The growth of the antiwar movement—from mass demonstrations to the campaigns of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy—is treated alongside the formative role of the media in covering the war and the eventual return of Vietnam veterans to a war-torn America.

Topics covered include the French colonization of Vietnam and the French-Indochina War, the application of America’s Cold War containment policy to Vietnam, the rise of Ho Chi Minh and the National Liberation Front, and the escalation of America’s involvement on the ground and in the air. Also explored are the effects of such seminal events as the Tet Offensive and the Christmas Bombing, and America’s final departure from Vietnam.

The collection is edited by George Herring, professor of history at the University of Kentucky; Clarence Wyatt, associate professor of history at Centre College; and Robert K. Brigham, associate professor of history at Vassar College.

The Vietnam Era is the second title in American Journey’s Making of Modern America sub-series, which was launched a year ago with The Great Depression and the New Deal. It is Macintosh and Windows compatible, and costs $149.

Two other miniseries round out the American Journey offerings. The American Timelines miniseries includes The Constitution and Supreme Court, The American Revolution, the Civil War, and Westward Expansion. The Resources for Multicultural Studies miniseries contains The Native American Experience, The Immigrant Experience, The African-American Experience, The Asian-American Experience, The Hispanic-American Experience, and Women in America.

Primary Source Media adds a new CD-ROM to the American Journey collection every 6 months. The online version of each new title is made available via online subscription a month after a new disc is released.

Primary Source Media, based in Woodbridge, Connecticut, is a contextual publisher dedicated to providing access to primary source images and documents in a spectrum of multimedia and preservation formats for educators, librarians, students, and researchers. In September 1998, Primary Source Media merged with Gale Research and Information Access company (IAC) to form The Gale Group.

Source: Primary Source Media, Woodbridge, CT, 800/444-0799; Fax: 203/397-3893; http://www.psmedia.com.

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