So my History teacher just announced that instead of doing a final exam we will be doing an 8-page research paper due in 3 weeks. Normally I wouldn't have a problem finding references but I'm a little tight for time. Could some of you please mention some authors/books that would help out? My thesis is "America lost the Vietnam War due to lack of support at home and lack of strategy on the battlefield." We were only taught up to World War 2 so if you find anything wrong with my thesis I'll be more than happy to take advice and corrections.
When it comes to military strategy, a great suggestion would be to check out Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife which is a great introduction into the world of counterinsurgency through two examples: The Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War. It should be more than helpful in highlighting what went wrong on the battlefield for the United States.
Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves is an account of how the Pentagon's push for quantifiable body counts as part of its belief that the war could be won through attrition undermined the effort to "win hearts and minds" by creating the perfect conditions for war crimes.
SecDef Robert McNamara's autobiographical In Retrospect details with some specificity his own misgivings about the aim and scope of the war, and as its chief architect I think his insights are important. See also Errol Morris' The Fog Of War, a great documentary about McNamara's life and tenure as SecDef which touches on how the difficulty of making decisions in the midst of a conflict led to the breakdown of US strategy in Vietnam.