The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam, 1964-1966

Robert Topmiller's The Lotus Unleashed is a scholarly history, published by the University Press of Kentucky, of the Buddhist peace movement in South Vietnam between 1964 and 1966, including the self immolations and mass protests that drew international attention to Buddhist opposition to the Vietnamese government and the war. Topmiller had personal experience in Vietnam and the book's authority rests on substantial archival and documentary research into a movement that had previously received less sustained scholarly attention than the war's more purely military and political history. Its limit is the specific window it covers, 1964 to 1966, so a claim about Vietnamese Buddhism's political role before or after that particular two year period needs a source addressing that different timeframe.