Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam [Paperback]

Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians

The American Empire Project
Winner of the Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few bad apples. But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to kill anything that moves.

Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called a My Lai a month. Devastating and definitive,Kill Anything That Movesfinally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

An indispensable, paradigm-shifting new history of the war...All these decades later, Americans still haven't drawn the right lesson from Vietnam. San Francisco Chronicle

A searing and meticulously documented book...A damning account of the horrors the United States inflicted on civilians. Financial Times

Harrowing. The New York Review of Books

A powerful case&With his urgent but highly readable style, Turse delves into the secret history of U.S.-led atrocities. He has brought to his book an impressive trove of new research--archives explored and eyewitnesses interviewed in the United States and Vietnam. With superb narrative skill, he spotlights a troubling question: Why, with all the evidence collected l³+