This book has great chapter titles, and 80 pages of notes.

There are a lot of questions in this book are about death. While President Kennedy was alive, it was not obvious that Vietnam was going to be part of the world in which so many Americans would die. The insignificance of the problem at the time Kennedy took office might be guessed from such assessments as, "Interrogations of captured Vietcong cadres showed them to be well trained and brought in, across the seventeenth parallel, or through Laos and Cambodia. The total Vietcong in central Vietnam had grown from a thousand at the end of 1959 to five times that number by mid-1961." (p. 102). President Kennedy had authorized an increase in American troops that jumped from hundreds to thousands as the years went by, but with little sign that, merely seven years after JFK took office, more than a thousand troops per week on each side might be losing their lives in Nam early in 1968.

As a professor in history with a year off from teaching, Howard Jones had the opportunity to examine documentary sources and the Oral History Interviews at presidential libraries, and he even talked to a few of the remaining participants. Daniel Ellsberg is not a major character in this book, though Jones talked to him on March 27, 2002, concerning a meeting in which President Kennedy asked Lansdale about getting rid of The Nhus, "But if that didn't work out--or I changed my mind and decided to get rid of Diem--would you be able to go along with that?" Lansdale ended up in a limousine with Robert McNamara after the meeting, where McNamara told him, "When he asks you to do something, you don't tell him you won't do it." (p. 365). Actually, the source of this story is a book by A. J. Langguth, a New York Times correspondent in South Vietnam who claimed "Ellsberg's unpublished memoir, Langguth asserted, contained this account of Lansdale's clandestine meeting with the president." (p. 365). "Ellsberg likewise considers the story valid. But in an interview of McNamara conducted by Langguth years afterward, the former secretary alleged that he did not recall the meeting." (pp. 365-366). I checked the index of SECRETS by Daniel Ellsberg, finally published in October, 2002, and found no mention of President Kennedy on the pages of the only entry for "Lansdale, Edward G.: McNamara's meeting with," though it included a page on which "high Vietnamese officials who met with General Lansdale regarded him warily but with awe because of his reputation as a kingmaker. They assumed he was there to pick the next Diem." By the time Ellsberg was on the Lansdale team, LBJ was president, Diem and Nhu were dead, and the Vietnamese could only hope that another government like Diem's would be better than a bunch of generals.

America clearly considered a coup against Diem at a time when it was trying to be as neutral as possible, because Diem could have asked American diplomats to leave Nam if he had any evidence that the Americans were actively engaging in plots against a government that it was supposed to be supporting. The index is good at sorting out who was involved, though it isn't until page 280 that Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a brigadier general in the Army Reserves who spent 1962 writing policy papers on Vietnam, was given the opportunity to become the American ambassador to Saigon. In the photo section, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's trip to Saigon on May 12, 1961, established that Frederick Nolting was ambassador then. President Kennedy is shown talking with Henry Cabot Lodge on August 15, 1963, just a few weeks before JFK's CBS television broadcast with Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963. As usual, "Lodge's appointment, the Kennedy administration insisted, ensured bipartisan support for its Vietnam policy. These statements were true, but they did not reflect reality. The White House believed that Nolting had become too close to Diem," (p. 281). The note supporting this information adds, "Nolting learned of his removal over radio while on vacation." (p. 501).

While this is a history of policy that led to the Vietnam war, there is little sense that any possibility, other than a result which might be considered a victory for American policy, was ever considered. The only use that the Vietnamese had for the Americans was for creating the illusion that somehow America could win a war there. By September 18, 1963, Lodge was trying to get Nhu to leave the country, and reporting back to Washington, "one feels sorry for him. He is wound up as tight as a wire. He appears to be a lost soul, a haunted man who is caught in a vicious circle. The Furies are after him." (p. 371).

This is history on an emotional level. I have no doubt that Jack Ruby pulled the trigger of the pistol that shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach, resulting in Oswald's death, and it might have been because of a cancer that would take the life of Jack Ruby before the end of the 1960s, when we had learned enough from Lenny Bruce to let just about anybody swear, if they felt like it. For President Kennedy to remain on good relations with the C.I.A., after news started coming in on how bad the situation in Nam really was, is like expecting Americans to believe that Ruby and Oswald were friends, or even knew each other. Oswald and Ruby do not appear in this book. For that side of the story, see OSWALD TALKED by La Fontaine. This book has no news on who took part in the JFK assassination, which is officially still more of a mystery than anything that happened in Nam.

A remarkable collection of powerful and memorable images: protest posters produced in Vietnam, Cuba and the United States. The art is incredible, and the essays skillfully provide insight into the posters themselves and the contexts in which they were created. I wish i had seen the exhibition myself, but this book is a valuable substitute.

The Vietnam War was a product of the Cold War, that great conflict between titan powers that was spawned by the nuclear age and that dominated foreign diplomacy for decades. It was capitalism versus communism and democracy versus autocracy. The conflict raged not only in the battlefields of Vietnam, but also in the homeland, where the war took the center stage of a cultural and social revolution. In all of the commotion and of all the debate, the war, at the field level, became a product of the political chaos that characterized America during that period. Washington, who scrambled for a policy that worked, that appeased the nation, that placated the growing upheaval, in the end never found it. Its failure to do so produced the only solution that was politically viable albeit immoral: get out anyway you can, but by golly DO GET OUT! This is what Decent Interval is about.

Decent Interval is Frank Snepp's first hand account of the immoral exit the United States made from Vietnam in 1975. Aside from the issues concerning the righteousness of the war, of lost American lives, of a nation grown weary, and of the social/cultural revolution it became a part of, the fact is, that nevertheless, we were there, and we made commitments. And although making the exit may very well have been the right thing to do, the way we left violated the principles that make up the character of our nation. We failed to live up to the very values that we usually identify as American, or at least those values that we like to believe we possess. We value human life. We value freedom. We value honesty. And most of all we value being recognized as champions of all of that. We love that image of America. In Decent Interval we learn that America's darkest hour in Vietnam did not occur during the war. Instead, our worst folly came in the end. We bungled everything from leaving behind a huge arsenal for the enemy, to turning our backs on thousands of people who were loyal to America, who trusted us, who knew our values, and never in their wildest dreams did they imagine that their service to us would be repaid with deception and abandonment.

Decent Interval is not a partisan view in the traditional Pro-war/Anti-war sense. Rather it's a factual account of events as seen through Snepp's eyes. Snepp was a CIA analyst in Saigon, and some have labeled Decent Interval as a whistle blow, but in actuality, the fact that our involvement in Vietnam was full of bureaucratic incompetence and ineptitude, was no secret. Snepp simply gave us the details. .

Decent Interval is an excellent read. It epitomizes everything that went wrong in Vietnam. It illustrates the limits of our political power in the face of an increasingly anxious electorate, and how political survivability took precedence over what would otherwise have been considered the "right thing to do."

Tim Page's return to Cambodia and Vietnam is told with both a unique sense of humor and a deep compassion for his colleagues and friends who did not survive the experiences which shaped Tim's life. Those who have suffered through the seediest hotel accomodations of Southeast Asia will admire Tim's descriptive vocabulary and tact. Never forgetting his special comrades, Dana Stone and Sean Flynn, Tim Page lays out some detail of his investigations in Cambodia which did not fit into his outstanding documentary film on the incident "Danger On the Edge of Town". While the American government talked about "highest national priority" from Washington DC, Tim was in the field in Cambodia and Vietnam taking concrete action. Page's work on the memorial for correspondents lost in Indochina and his book "Requiem" are outstanding contributions to be added to this book and the earlier "Page After Page".

Dickerson, who is something of an expert on the area, looks at the Delta's dark underside in this highly readable and admirably researched investigative report.
He labors to weave together rednecks, the Mafia, wealthy Memphis businessmen, politicians, and cops into a coherent web of conspiracy against Civil Rights and war protest, but his results tend to be suggestive rather than conclusive.
He does seem to have read everything ever written on the region, and in the face of such impressive effort it seems almost ungrateful to point out that the Little Rock Central High School crisis took place in 1957, not 1954, and the Vietnam War did not end with the American withdrawal in 1973, but such lapses will serve as useful reminders that sweeping exposes must be received with a degree of caution.

TJ Kelly's DMZ Diary is a stunning account of his Vietnam service. Kelly writes with honesty and intelligence, allowing readers to accompany him on his journeys into combat with his fellow Marines. Kelly recalls stories of heroism and horror from Vietnam that will move the most jaded military historian. His stories of life away from combat provide humour and relief from the ever-present tension of the war. In DMZ Diary the author reveals his transformation from a gung-ho new guy to a seasoned veteran. The story of this transformation is an important addition to the history of the American experience in Vietnam.

The dramatic, smart-as-a-tack, compassionate Vietnam War memoir by the man who would, years later, be kidnapped by Colombian guerrillas and write LONG MARCH TO FREEDOM, his own account of his highly publicized captivity and release. Get both books. Hargrove is a warrior who cares about the starving millions, who has risked his life for them and who writes memoirs as gripping as good novels.

I first became a Howard Brodie fan after seeing several of his WW II drawings along the walls of the Pentagon. I then started research on him and found several issues of Yank with his work. Finding this book was the ultimate. It is a "must" for anyone who wants to get a true feel of the troops on the ground in war.

What an outstanding book! It is full of non-stop action from an author who puts you in the battle zone with him. Mr. Prater is able to put you into these true to life battle scenes and lets the reader know what true war is about without the Hollywood gloss one is accustom to seeing.

This is certainly more a biopic that anyone who was concious during the Vietnam era will certainly be able to relate to. I found it hard to put the book down as Mr. Prater truly provides a unique look into the Marine Corps in a battle situation and a look at the training they recieve.

Whether you are interested in the book as a Vietnam era story, or as an account of a man who didn't let his patriotism end even through the worst tragedies, I recommend this book for every American.

Very well done volume, thoughtful, not a "flash in the pan", both good science and good clinical care. One of the few volumes I have ever seen to address the care of wounded and the issues of CBW in historical context, as well as POWs and the stress on families. Comprehensive.