Scholars and writers who challenge conventional accounts of history are often courageous and invaluable seekers of truth. They don’t always find the whole truth, but their work often gets us closer to what really happened. One such scholar is Mark Moyar, whose second volume of a projected three-volume study of the Vietnam War has just been published by Encounter Books. Titled Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968, the book effectively trashes what Moyar calls the “orthodox” view of the war — the view of most American history books and the famous and widely watched PBS documentaries of Stanley Karnow and Ken Burns.
