Pierre Asselin
Professional affiliation
Full Biography
Pierre Asselin is Dwight E. Stanford Chair in the History of US Foreign Relations at San Diego State University. He is the author of A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), winner of the 2003 Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize; Hanoi鈥檚 Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (University of California Press, 2013), winner of the 2013 Arthur Goodzeit Book Award; and Vietnam鈥檚 American War: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2018). The latter, surveying the Vietnamese communist experience during the Vietnam War, has become a staple in both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses addressing the conflict. A second, extensively revised and updated edition was published by Cambridge in 2024. Asselin is editor of The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings, forthcoming in February 2025.
Other notable, recent peer-reviewed publications include 鈥淣ational Liberation by Other Means: US Visitor Diplomacy in the Vietnam War鈥 in Past & Present (2024); 鈥淭he Indochinese Communist Party鈥檚 Unfinished Revolution of 1945 and the Origins of Vietnam鈥檚 30-Year Civil War鈥 in Journal of Cold War Studies (2023); 鈥淔rench Decolonisation and Civil War: The Dynamics of Violence in the Early Phases of Anti-colonial War in Vietnam and Algeria, 1940-56鈥 (with Martin Thomas) in Journal of Modern European History (2022); 鈥淔orgotten Front: The NLF in Hanoi鈥檚 Diplomatic Struggle, 1965-67鈥 in Diplomatic History (2021); and 鈥淕lobal Revolutionary Currents, the Vietnamese Revolution, and the Origins of the American War鈥 in African Identities (2018).
Asselin has been a guest on several podcasts, including American History Hit. He frequently appears on C-SPAN programming. His talk as part of C-SPAN鈥檚 Lectures in History series ranks among the most popular. Entitled 鈥淭he Vietnam War, 1965-75,鈥 it may be viewed at
