Ken Burns’s “The Vietnam War”

Mark Moyar is the historian and author of Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954-1965, the revisionist history of the Vietnam war as well as other important books. Mark is director of the Project on Military and Diplomatic History at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). There is no one whose opinion of the 10-part, 18-hour PBS documentary history of the war by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick I would more like to have. Mark will publish columns on the series after it concludes on Thursday.

On Friday at CSIS Mark will host and participate in a debate/discussion with leading historians and veterans, including three who served on the production’s historical advisory panel. Representing a wide range of perspectives, the participants will assess the documentary. According to CSIS, they will explore not only the production’s historical and artistic merits, but also its relevance to ongoing debates about America’s national identity and its role in the world. The participants include Mark himself, of course, but also Thomas Vallely (Harvard University), Lewis Sorley (independent scholar), Marc Selverstone (University of Virginia), Gregory Daddis (Chapman University), Nu Anh Tran (University of Connecticut), Jay Veith (independent scholar) and Erik Villard (US Army Center of Military History).

The debate will be streamed online from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. (Eastern) on this CSIS page. Questions for the question-and-answer period can be tweeted to @CSISPMDH. I certainly intend to watch and thought Power Line readers who have been taking in the series might want to as well.

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