Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

Based on classified documents & 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

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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 & historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive & systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."

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

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Nick Turse, an award-winning journalist & historian, is the author of The Complex & the research director for the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, & The Nation. Turse’s investigations of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam have gained him a Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, & a fellowship at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.