The basics of the Vietnam disaster are familiar to all of us. There is much new information to learn, however, about the political aspects of the conflict. All this and more is covered in great detail in this enormous volume by Robert Mann. Besides the familiar details exposed by David Halberstam some thirty years ago in "The Best and the Brightest", Mann documents in enormous detail the political events related to Vietnam each and every year beginning with the French defeat and running right through the fall of Saigon in 1975. This was far and away America's longest war and there is much to tell. While Mann blames Eisenhower and Kennedy, he reserves the bulk of blame for Lyndon Johnson who knew the struggle was hopeless yet refused to be "the first president to lose a war." Johnson also misled COngress and the country at large as to the costs of the war because he was afraid it would jeopardize his domestic programs. This book is most useful, however, in showing the evolution of later war opponents like Mike Mansfield William Fulbright and George McGovern. All supported the war in its early stages. Much has been written about this war and much still needs to be written. While all concede the war was a disaster opinions still vary on why. Could the war have been won? Was it worth fighting at all? Why did these political figures who later opposed the war support it at the beginning? These are questions Mann attempts to answer. The book is not easy or light reading but is a necessary antidote to a generation of books and films which portray the horror of the war but not the why's of it. It's a good read and I recommend it.

Let me start by saying that this is a long book, a very long book. As it should be. Starting with the "roots" of the war, specifically the fallout over Truman's so-called "loss" of China, Mann takes us through every twist and turn of political thought and action behind the war, covering the period from the late 1940s to April 29, 1975. The great value of the book and its length is that Mann frequently makes wonderful connections between events of different times. This is the best pure political history of the war, and as such should be a must-read for anyone wishing to understand why it unfolded as it did.

Sure the book is lengthy, but so was American involvement in Vietnam...The book's value is as a single volume history that focuses laser-like on the backdoor political story of Vietnam, an aspect usually getting much less attention than headline-grabbing military or protest developments All in all, the book sheds much needed light on 30 years of deceitful shenanigans in Washington that left 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead, 50,000 Americans dead, and generations of wounds, emotional and physical, that will probably never heal. As the book shows, Americans are correct in not trusting their government, especially as it behaves abroad.

Mann walks us through a revealing series of presidential administrations and policies, starting with Truman's, and ending with Ford's. Each has a role in gearing up the meat grinder, some more honorably than others, but none comes off looking good as the country spirals ever downward toward disillusion and defeat. Ditto for the senators who opposed the war (Fulbright, Mc Govern, Mansfield, et. al.), lawmakers who, despite hours of pious rhetoric, could never get their legislative act together. Scarce mention is made of military or protest developments except when either influences major political decisions. As a much needed political chronicle of that 30 year span, the book succeeds admirably.

Mann's perspective is primarily a liberal one (which probably explains one particularly misleading review), but favors no individuals, liberal, conservative, or radical. He emphasizes the extent to which official hands were tied by red-baiting rhetoric of the cold war, in which every communist, nationalist or internationalist, was seen as taking his marching orders from Moscow. Such cramped thinking refuses to distinguish a national liberation movement from an international communist conspiracy, thereby setting policy on a one way track that no one could get off of. Here Mann is on solid ground. But on the allied topic of the domino theory, there is more truth to that theory than liberals such as Mann like to admit. The problem for defenders of the theory is that southeast Asia is not where the dominoes fell. Rather they fell in Central Africa (Angola, Mozambique, the collapse of the Portuguese empire) and Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, to a degree Guatemala). As more recent documentation has shown, rebel movements in each of these contested venues were boosted considerably by US defeat, demoralization, and subsequent lessening of a will to intervene. So in the rather ironical sense of being right for the wrong reasons, conservatives understood better than liberals the global stakes of intervention in southeast Asia. Be that as it may, Mann has written a very readable and revealing account of how Washington got us into that bloody mess in the first place.

The writing is good if you take it in short small segments, but I had a hard time getting the flow of the book. Also he seemed to spend time on people who weren't the "young war correspondents" and he seemed to spend time on things that happened outside the early Vietnam timeframe. [...]

"Once Upon a Distant War," is a highly readable history of the various journalists covering America's involvement in the early years (1961-63) of Vietnam. Prochnau has produced an intriguing popular history that has some flaws, but on the whole is quite a good book.

The strength of the book is the fact that the material itself is so fascinating. Saigon, circa 1963, was an extremely exciting place for a foreign journalist. America had begun a huge build-up of forces in South Vietnam, the Diem regime was at its most oppressive, and the Vietcong were making huge gains in the rural countryside. Into this mix were thrown men like David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, and Malcolm Brown: relatively young, idealistic reporters who were determined to get the real story. But the US officials in South Vietnam were less than willing to assist the "green" correspondents, who they claimed were not "on the team." Lied to and rebuffed by the official channels, the reporters sought out contacts in the middle of the action: South Vietnamese officers and American field advisors like John Paul Vann who were willing to tell the ugly truth. The result was a constant battle between the Saigon correspondents and the Kennedy administration, other journalists, and even their own publishers. The only people who hated the journalists more were President Diem, his brother Nhu, and most vociferously, South Vietnam's First Lady, Madame Nhu. For two years the correspondents fought for every story and risked everything, including their lives, to get what they believed was the truth about Vietnam out to the American public.

Prochnau is clearly in awe of his protagonists, but I think he still manages to give a fair account. The correspondents are not perfect: Sheehan goofs big time in his early account of My Tho, inflating the body count from 15 to 200. Halberstam was hugely influential, but as Prochnau makes clear, he was also incorrigible, uncompromising, and had a mean temper. One of the most important points that Prochnau stresses is that these men were not anti-war (certainly not at this early stage). Men like Halberstam were ardently anti-communist, and were only angry because the government was lying about a cause that mattered so much. But even the reporters' ostensible adversaries, such as Ambassador Nolting, are given full and fair treatment. (General Harkins is the one exception, but I've never read anything that suggested he was other than incompetent, blind optimist.) In addition to these detailed characterizations, Prochnau adds a wealth of anecdotes that give the book both humor and authenticity. Particularly interesting were the stories of Marguerite Higgins and her Machiavellian ways ("innocent as a cobra"), Sheehan's obsessive 16 year struggle to write "A Bright Shining Lie," and Halberstam mouthing off to high government officials ("Bull..., General! Why are you standing here telling our friend Clurman this bull...?").

My complaints are few. The first is about Prochnau's style: he is eminently readable and well suited for the material, but sometimes his tone becomes so informal it borders on cheesy ("Vietnam was not simply exotic. It was erotic. And narcotic.") My second complaint is that Prochnau glosses over many aspects of the war and does not give a very complete picture of the complex military situation. But his story is about the journalists, so maybe this is an unfair criticism. Then let me leave it as a caveat: do not read this book to gain an in-depth understanding of the political-military situation in South Vietnam, read it to learn about the tribulations of the journalists. In some ways, this book is better suited for people who already understand the history of the era and will not be confused by Prochnau's overly-simplistic (albeit justifiably so) account of the war. That said, this is still quite an entertaining look at some very interesting characters at a crucial juncture in modern American history.

Not long after I finished the book, I read that Jerry Bruckheimer ("Armageddon" and all those big-bucks Hollywood action thrillers) is planning a major movie on it. Not surprising. Prochnau's "Once Upon a Distant War" reads like an adventure novel: a half dozen young war correspondents fighting everybody -- the U.S. govt, the South Vietnamese govt, their own colleagues in the media, even their bosses -- to get the early Vietnam story to the public. It's also first-rate history. You won't learn more about how we got into the mess in Vietnam -- and learn it with such page-turning narrative drama -- anywhere else. I don't know how I missed this the first time around. It's one of the best war books I've read and the best ever about reporters. Don't wait for the movie.

Kiss the Boys Goodbye is a well detailed and researched book on the continuing plight of the POW/MIA saga which has repeatedly surfaced since the end of the Vietnam war. The book is basically the continuation of Monica Jensen Stevenson's investigation which started when she worked for 60 Minutes and aired a program of POW/MIA's which was not to her satisfaction.

That is to say, the media, being 60 Minutes, edited the program and other matierial to suit what would be acceptable to the U.S government as to not cause the government any embarrassment or uncomfortable questions on the subject. Stevenson, unhappy with the final result, decided to quit working for 60 Minutes and wrote this book on her own with her husband William Stevenson.

This book will probably make the reader angry and suspicious of what just really has become of our U.S. soldiers that were "lost" in Vietnam and those who were taken as prisoners of war. There are multiple accounts in the book of government cover-up's, intimidation, media suppression of facts, outright lies to military dependants who lost loved ones in Vietman, and manipulation to coerce people from digging too deep to find true answers.

Kiss the Boys Goodbye contains many interviews and intelligence information gleaned from former POW's, former U.S. intelligence operatives, U.S. politicians, families of the missing, and others that has placed them at risk for retaliation and humiliation from the government.

This book will give startling examples of recent intelligence that proves Americans are still alive and being held against their will in Vietnam and what has actually been done to address the issue by our govenment in recent years (which hasn't been much). Beyond that, the reader will be given information why the govenment has refused to help bring missing men home. Namely, the "secret wars" that the United States fought in Cambodia and mostly Laos and how the wars there were financed by drug money and the spurious dealings of the CIA.

As a member of our military for 15 years now, I find myself sad, disturbed, shocked, and angered by the outrageous acts perpetrated by our government and their callous disregard for our own military men. Probably everyone who reads this book whether a part of the military or not, will find themselves feeling the say way. I also took it upon myself to research this subject more closely and have found many, many books related to this subject that back up Monica Jensen Stevenson's information and findings.

I would highly recommend this book to everyone who would like a truthful explanation on the fate of our POW's, what has been hidden from the public by our govenment, and the illegal use of power by our govenment and it's intelligence agencies.

This gripping expose of a major political scandal of the Vietnam War is the story of a investigation by two award-winning journalists. Kiss the Boys Goodbye shows evidence of POWs abandoned in Vietnam.

From the government obstruction and missing files to censored testimony the book reveals that the power brokers are really in control. The well-detailed book leaves virtually no stone unturned.

The book is not only a "good read," it also contains a wealth of important information that no researcher of the Pow/MIA issue can do without. The author has gone to exhaustive lengths in the detailing of this American tragedy.

Consumed by the book from the first page, I am most impressed by the way the author is able to bring out the truth. So for those looking for truly honest answers you would do well to get this book today.

This is a book that should make ordinary American citizens exceedingly sad and angry. Although some may argue that its message is old news, and certainly very dated information, the horror and outrage it should occasion is neither old nor dated. For what the authors contend, and go on to impressively prove, is that our national government deliberately and maliciously betrayed its own soldiers trapped as Prisoners Of War (POWs) in Vietnam, abandoning them in favor of a quick and otherwise painless exit from the war in Southeast Asia. This, as the authors argue, is a truly devastating indictment of the Nixon administration, and one for which they cannot be forgiven.

However, it is more than that. It is also a bizarre story of men left behind for the sake of political expedience and due to a number of highly classified clandestine operations, which were purposely kept from the American people. The story line begins with the sad saga of a young ex-marine who escaped from Vietnam on the late 1970s and claimed to have seen a large number of fellow American servicemen still being held by the Vietnamese. However, he was quickly charged with desertion and collaboration with the enemy, in what seemed to be a desperate effort on the part of governmental officials to bury both him and his story of American prisoners as deeply as possible from public view. From here the plot takes a number of bizzare twists and turns.

As the authors began to investigate the young marine's story, layers of deception, half-truths, and active censorship began to emerge. What they finally uncovered was an amazing tale of official deception from the highest levels in government, and also a very well organized and relentless abuse of official governmental power. This book reveals convincing evidence of American soldiers and sailors deliberately abandoned for political expedience, and of families torn apart by these acts. It also raises quite provocative questions concerning the very nature of democracy, and the corruptibility of ordinary men given such power. Similarly, they show how the use of claims of national security were used to derail efforts to learn the truth, and of an active conspiracy to keep the public from discovering the truth.

There are many of us who have long believed that Nixon and Kissinger made a pact with the devil himself in order to to extricate the United States fro the ongoing horror of Vietnam. What is truly mind-boggling is to discover just how right we were to suspect that they, and many others in the government since that time, would take such drastic action as they have to conceal these facts and to evade the truth. This is a worthwhile book, and one that demands to be read. I hope you can approach it with an open mind. Its arguments and the evidence associated with it are, in my opinion, very convincing. Enjoy!

Everything We Had offers a collection of intensely personal war memories from 33 Americans who served in Vietnam. The strength of the book lies in the non-scripted, unconstrained tone of most of the 'stories'. They speak openly about their experiences, with little attempt to "prettify" or rationalize their involvement in the war. This book does presume to explain away the Vietnam war, it simply offers candid testiment to the way it was.

There have been a few who have tried to cast doubt on this entire book because one of the accounts here has been exposed as false. Well guess what folks, we have one person telling rather embellished war stories (and who nonetheless WAS in Vietnam), and that still leaves 32 credible eyewitness accounts. Vietnam Veterans of America is politically centrist and welcomes ALL Vietnam veterans as members, and so the extreme right wing, which would prefer that all veterans groups be ultra-conservative, simply does not like them and will try to discredit anything associated with them, such as this book.

I'd say, forget the critics and read this book. The 32 credible eyewitness accounts here are powerful, moving, and will give you a "grunt's eye view" of what it was like to be there.

This is one of several "in their own words" books which came out during the early 1980s, when America suddenly took an interest in trying to understand and get a grasp on the Vietnam War. In my opinion, this is still one of the best of those books.

I wanted to address this book because I read certain accounts within that book several times because they were interesting. Al Santoli has assembled a number of thought-provoking and detailed accounts straight from the veterans' mouths. The book allows the reader to learn a lot about personal courage, fear, and a kind of wisdom about the war that you would not realize unless, like the veterans, you were there. I do not proclaim that every account in the books is infallible and completely factual, but I will say that every account has something to it other than a certain dismissal as a bold-faced tall tale out of the mouth of a charlatan. The Mike Beamon chapter is probably the most compelling chapter, next to the P.O.W. account. Certain blow-hard right-wing writers have, in many cases, exposed those fake veterans and self-presenters of the CMH. But in the case of this chapter, whether this is truly this man's name or not, I do believe there is much more to this account. You cannot make up a story like that, and I do not believe Mr. Santoli got duped. Understand that they work on this book was probably completed during the mid-seventies to early eighties. The programs and missions that this individual is talking about were not disclosed to the public and were not part of popular movies and t.v. shows about the military, like they are nowdays. This individual was privileged to information that the normal soldier was not, and he exposes a lot of mind-blowing information. Everything one reads is not neccessarily believable, but in this case a good portion of this chapter cannot be discounted and dismissed. Whether his name is Mike Beamon or whether he teaches women's studies at some college is unknown for sure, but rest assured that may very well be exactly what he wants.

For anyone who still does harbour the received notion that the USA lost the Vietnam War to a tiny 3rd-World nation of peasant farmers, Mark Woodruff's book will come as a surprise. To his credit he does make clear at the outset that this IS a partial review of the war. He's an ex-Marine and is determined to make the point that - taken purely as a military operation between the years 1965-1973 - the US Armed Forces can justifably consider themselves `victors'. However, noble as that undertaking is, he'll also be aware of Von Clausewitz's statement that "war is a continuation of politics by other means". As he points out, the Vietnamese were fighting other foes long before the Americans appeared, and the Northern Vietnamese continued to fight their Southern counterparts for two, ultimately successful, years afterwards. He does a fine job of refuting many of the myths that have been handed down since the end of the war and is clear on exactly what the scope of his book is, and crucially isn't. But the reader seeking a wider view of S.E.Asian history and politics will be entitled to ask about just WHY the USA became as heavily involved as it did (particularly after having supported Ho Chi Minh and Viet nationalists against the Japanese during WW2, and after been so closely involved in financially supporting the abortive French attempts to `hold onto' French Indochina in the 1950s), why it allowed such a corrupt regime as Thieu's to develop, what ultimate effect Nixon and Kissinger's secret bombing of Cambodia had (unleashing the Khmer Rouge?) and why it did ultimately decide to pull out? Having said all of that, within its own narrow parameters `Unheralded Victory' is a welcome addition to the histories of the S.E.Asian conflicts.

After reading Jeff Thurston review, I am at a loss. He obviously did not read the same book I did. His review did the usual liberal hatchet job that the Vietnam newsies did from the No Name bar in Saigon.

I went back and read the newspapers, Berkeley Barb, L. A. Free Press, U. S. News and World Reports, Time, and Newsweek, of that period. The difference in attitudes is astounding. We lost the propaganda war. Jeff Thurston is still perpetuating the myth the North Vietnam was better. They were better at atrocities on a large scale.

In Mr. Jones book, he talks about the North Vietnamese Government admitting the subterfuges they used. When the other side admits to doing, what we have been saying all along, it is not a stab in the back.

A must for any Vet or serious student of the Vietnam Struggle.

Woodruff's well researched book finally puts the correct perspective on the Vienam War. Unheralded Victory makes it clear that, by any yardstick of military activity, the Vietnam conflict was an endless series of crushing defeats for the North Vietnamese forces and a long, small action, hard fought victory for the US (and their allied) forces.

What escapes most observers of the Vietnam War is the distinction between winning the war and ending the war, something that Woodruff clarifies. He points out that while Westmoreland submitted plans for winning the conflict (the invasion of North Vietnam), this was totally unacceptable for political reasons, leaving only the ending of the war in the best available circumstances as the most realistic option.

In cataloging the allied victories, Woodruff draws into sharp relief just how ill-served the world's public was by the western press corps. A group of people who were in the main (and there were some notable exceptions), a self serving, self appointed tribe of freeloaders interested only in getting a good story, rather than telling the truth. Aiding the western press corps was the propaganda machinery of North Vietnam who must have viewed the western journalists as the best free advertising on the planet.

Unheralded Victory draws no specific conclusions as the right or wrong of supporting the government of South Vietnam. Many antiwar commentators gleefully point out that the Saigon regime was despostic, cruel, repressive, corrupt and undemocratic, while failing to acknowledge that the North Vietnam government was essentially the same. Additionally, the Saigon government's stated position was to be left alone to mismanage its own affairs, while North Vietnam's stated position was to invade the south by force of arms and mismanage the whole country - something it continuously denied during the conflict, claiming that the war in the south was due to local action.

The book itself relies exclusively on facts, documenting both the sacrifice and valour of the individual soldiers and the overall conduct of the war. It dispells the myths of fragging, combat refusals, drug abuse and most other icons of the antiwar factions. In place of these it demonstrates the war could not have been concluded in the sense of a clear cut victory, but that up until the last combat troops left the country, there was no question that the allied forces won every decisive engagement. This is what makes the book so readable - the bald statements of victory all speak for themselves. There is no 'stab in the back' concepts, no political rantings, no finger pointing, no revisionist history, just plain good old 'political theory' destroying facts.

It doesn't matter which side of the political fence you want to sit on, Unheralded Victory shows that something went on in Vietnam that was missed at the time (for whatever reason) and it is opportune to revisit the scene - not to rewrite history, but to try to understand why the glaringly obvious victory by the allies, and patent military failure of the North, was so badly misunderstood both then and now. Woodruff has done us a great service in presenting the truth as it was and in doing so highlights the price paid by those who fought and didn't come home.

A first class read.

I was subjected to this book as part of a reading regimen on the Vietnam War. I find that odd, since, despite the title, Vietnam seems to play very little part in Carroll's narrative. This book is about a man grappling with his faith and with his father, the only two subjects that he really engages in this book. His treatment of the Vietnam War is restricted to his platitudes about its evils and recountings of activities performed. Carroll never really engages the war in any meaningful way, just like he as a person never really engaged his priesthood. The War was treated as a backdrop for the narrative, but it should never be described as a book about Vietnam.

A heart wrenching memoir of Mr. Carroll's journey through catholism, politics and the family structure. As one who stood in those crowds pleading the injustices of a war many miles away not only in distance but purpose, I found James Carroll's life story inspiring. Many times through this novel I would find myself saying "I didn't know that." A major announcement from one who thought she knew just about all there was to know about the Vietnam war and the lies, senseless deaths and minipulative politics (is that an oxymoron) that surrounded this dark time in American history. I found the chapter "Holy Wars" most intriguing. It never ceases to amaze me how the Catholic church seems to find itself in the middle of some of the most important conflicts of the past two centuries.

"American Requiem" should be required reading for any 20th century history course and it might not be a bad read for a catholicism course. Since I was raised catholic and still practice in my own way, I could sympathize with the agony Mr. Carroll and his father experienced when it came to their faith. Fortunately, James Carroll was able to vocalize the conflict surrounding his love of God and a church that gives him spiritual balance and the problems with that same church's power and its decisions that appear to be made sometimes more for political gain rather than spiritual enrichment. The real tragedy falls in Mr. Carroll's father's story. Although the senior Carroll's professional life is nothing short of fascinating, his personal life reminds us how empty it all can be if we do not acknowledge the things that are truly important.

This was the first "history" based novel that I was unable to put down. Go get it now.

As a reader in my early twenties, until I read this memoir it was difficult for me to understand the enormity that was the Vietnam War to American consciousness. The power of the book is two-fold. The first is the picture Carroll paints of his family -- a distinctly American creation with which most readers can identify, especially those like myself who had a military upbringing. The second is the historic moment in which Carroll's emotional story unfolds. Until this book, I never truly felt what a blow the Vietnam War was to many Americans' faith in their country. The pathos in the story lies in the fact that while Carroll finds himself politically and ideologically in the tumultuous era of the 70's, he simultaneously alienates himself from his beloved father and the values the older man embodies. Some readers may think that the memoir is overly sentimental, yet the sincerity and introspection with which Carroll writes makes the emotions in the book more evocative than the more tired tear-jerkers out there. The complex emotions of love and regret are expressed beautifully by the close of the book. One of the most emotionally evocative books I've read in a long time and also an informative glimpse into a period of American history.

This book falls squarely into the category of a wonderfully developed "best of class", for it faces the issue of Robert McNamara complicity and lasting culpability for the debacle and aftermath associated with Vietnam. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, it is only fair to mention my own antipathy for McNamara, and my own belief he (as well as Henry Kissinger and a number of notable others) should have been indicted for crimes against humanity in association with the war in Vietnam. Nonetheless, this book is truly amazing at a number of levels, but most certainly because it puts the lie to the lingering neo-conservative notion that Vietnam was a necessary and winnable war that the nattering nabobs of negativity (read liberals here) and anti-war protestors inadvertently lost for America. Of course, such nonsense has more to do with wishful thinking then it does the reality of the times, as author Paul Hendrickson quickly illustrates.

This is a fascinating character study, one that poses McNamara as an isolated, antisocial figure more at home with the comfortable fictions of number crunching than with the quicksilver facts of everyday reality. His rise from Harvard to the Air Force to Ford won him wide acclaim as a "no-nonsense can-do" kind of guy, and this reputation for being the best and the brightest resulted in him being named Secretary of Defense by Jack Kennedy in what was likely the most disastrous public appointments of the last half of the 20th century. He force-fit his own conceptual perceptions onto the way the Department of Defense assessed itself and its engagements, so that quantitative measures came to supplant local experience and field judgment in the conduct of day-to-day operations in Vietnam. Thus, the most venial sorts of bean-counting by way of number of sorties, bomb tonnage dropped, and enemy body counts became the "meaningful measures of merit" (an actual term, not one I am concocting) the "whiz-kids" at the Pentagon used to determine where they stood in terms of the ultimate victory.

Meanwhile, thousands of American boys, as well as countless Vietnamese of every age, sex and description were lost in so-called "collateral damage". Engaged in the circular reasoning only a true believer in quantitative reasoning could marshal, McNamara fought to maintain the perception the war was being won, even when his raging intellect knew otherwise. Yet even after he recognized the reality of the situation, this self-described man of conscience could not bring himself to do the right and honorable thing. Rather than tell the truth and expose the outrageous situation in Vietnam, he remained silent, allowing many more thousand of young Americans and Vietnamese to die. It is this failure of conscience for which he should have been prosecuted, for his willing complicity in the continuing bloodbath long after he knew the war could not be won and that our efforts there would result only in further loss of life.

The book is also singular in its counter position of McNamara's evolution throughout the sixties and early seventies with five others so dramatically linked with the progress of the war in Vietnam; four Americans and a young Vietnamese citizen, all of whom were fatefully affected by McNamara's moral cowardice and abject failure to act or speak out. Most poignant for me was the story of one former Vietnam veteran turned artist who actually went berserk on a ferry when he discovered McNamara to be a fellow passenger. Finally, the author deals quite convincingly with the self-serving arguments McNamara himself has used to deflect criticism from himself, showing how one-sided and inconsistent they are with the public record. This is a terrific book, and one that provocatively revisits the painful and mind-numbing consequences that the terrible events of the sixties had for so many ordinary Americans. I recommend this book, although I must caution that reading it is hardly for the squeamish or faint of heart. It cuts deep into the heart of darkness that was so central to our venture in Vietnam, and faithfully recalls the depths of heartache and tragedy that piteous, misadventured action caused.

This book focuses on McNamera, his journey to the Pentagon, and the effects of his, at first, well intentioned chioces gone bad. Mr. Hendrickson has done a find job of capturing the histories and emotions of several people (from different facets) involved with or affected by the war. These are stories of betrayal, pain, forgiveness and moving on. Being my first book the Vietnam War, Mr. Hendrickson has left me with a strong desire to search out more on the people who were left with physical as well as emotional scars by the war. I now feel that I have a personal attachment to those soldiers, the people who peacefully tried to bring attention to this travisty and and anyone with a single thread of emotion towards to unjust piece of history.

A complex, meticulously researched subject is combined with an unusual and disarming writing style, which is informal and first-person. Woven throughout, in an amazingly relevant way, are the stories of the lives of five people profoundly affected by the war.

The details of McNamara's disillusionment with the war are fascinating reading, and serve to indict -- and convict -- McNamara on what many think is his greatest crime: he didn't speak out against the war after he was removed from office. Hendrickson suggests, compellingly, that if McNamara had campaigned against the war after leaving office, using all his intelligence and persuasiveness, that today there may have been a "McNamara Prize," similar in stature to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Along with saturation bombing of civilian populations, Operation Phoenix has to rate as America's most atrocious chapter in its collection of fun facts from Vietnam. Between 1967 to 1973 an estimated 40,000 Vietnamese were killed by CIA-sponsored "counterterror" and "hunter-killer" teams, and hundreds of thousands were sent to secret interrogation centers. William Colby's records show 20,587 dead between 1968 and 1971, though he likes to believe that most were killed in military combat and afterwards identified as part of the VC infrastructure.

Other testimony suggests that Colby was a bit disingenuous in these 1971 hearings. At one point Congressman Ogden Reid pulled out a list signed by a CIA officer that named VC cadre rounded up in a particular action in 1967. "It is of some interest that on this list, 33 of the 61 names were women and some persons were as young as 11 and 12," noted Reid.

Valentine spent four years researching this name-intensive book, and managed to interview over 100 Phoenix participants. If post-Vietnam America had ever looked into a mirror, this book might have become a bestseller. Instead it was published just as the Gulf War allowed us to resume business as usual, and went virtually unnoticed.

(Daniel Brandt is founder and president of Public Information Research, Inc.)

During the past few months, I have been devouring the literature on covert ops during the Vietnam War. By far the most candid, unflinching examination of these controversial programs is the excellent book by Doug Valentine. He carefully explains all the special operations techniques of compartmentalization, cover stories, plausible deniability, and secrecy oaths which are designed to keep covert ops secret forever. Moreover, he appears to have interviewed at length all the central players in Phoenix. Many books on covert ops, (which sometimes tend to glorify the operatives), rely on supposedly secret or newly declassified documents to buttress their claims. The problem with such an analytical approach is that frequently such documents are bogus, especially designed to camoflouge controversial or illegal activities. Valentine goes directly to the source -- the men of Phoenix and the officers in the chain of command. Valentine has succeeded in gaining access to many special operators who appear to have spoken from the heart about their missions. Moreover, he thoroughly and concretely lays out the structure of the controversial Phoenix program, in all of its complicated facets, from Provincial Reconnaissance Units to Studies and Observations Group missions. His book is likely to be criticized by those who wish to bury the uglier side of covert ops forever. It is precisely for this reason that his is such an important contribution to literature on Vietnam. April Oliver (former producer, CNN)

While Hollywood has done well to smoothen the edges by "informing" us that the Vietnam war was "dirty" (there must be also clean wars then) because of "isolated incidents" like the May Lai massacre, more and more books keep surfacing providing hardcore evidence that not only America conducted one of the most brutal wars and invasions recorded in history but also staged state of the art terrorism in the process.
This is exactly what the Phoenix program was about as is meticulously documented in this book. Started in 1968 and kept functioning throughout the war this program was a covert CIA operation aimed at terrorising primarily civilians who might've had the unfortunate intention (or did in fact) support the Vietkong.
Phoenix included everything in the book in averting the Vietnamese from helping the Vietkong, everything from organised torture to burning down whole villages on the mere suspicion that sympathisers might be nesting there to assasinations of key civilian figures. All in all over 40.000 civilians were murdered, most in cold blooded fashion, even though it had become clear from the very early stages that Phoenix was going to have little if any effect in America's effort to win the war.
Perhaps the one fact that strikes as most barbaric -understatement, since the mission of the program was barbarity by definition- was the accountant's logic under which Phoenix was run. Its officials had to produce monthly quotes of assasinations or "neutralisations" (hmm, this type of euphemism does bring to mind some other days in history too ) so they could report the "successes" back to headquarters.
Millions of dollars were pumped into all this but at the same time Phoenix created a massive black market as well, and contributed majorly in the -anyway- massive corruption that took place in the Vietnam war in both American personel and the Vietnamese civilian population in their struggle to survive the onslaught.
As intimidating and overwhelming this book is, i have to mention the two things that i found not in its favor: firstly, the author (who otherwise, has done a brilliant job documenting and interviewing) sinks the book too much in detail that will interest more the professional historians than the average reader. Details which include ranks, location of this or that office etc. And yes this does add undisputed credibility but it also tires. Another thing is that, as other reviewers also mentioned, the author somehow manages to come across as unwillingly glorifying sometimes the participants in Phoenix, he's trying hard to understand their other side, tries hard to portray some of them as people who saw all this as "doing a job, their job". This of course, can not work. Noone can sympathise with a torturer even if he's totally unable to understand what he's doing (something not improbable in extreme brainwashing conditions like those in the military).
But all this doesnt take anything away from the incredible work Douglas Valentine had done here. Being that this program was a co-op only made his work harder. People are not as willing to talk about a covert operation. And if they do then they are not going to give you everything on a platter. You will eventually have to conduct some painstaking work yourself to unearth the rest of the facts yourself. That means reading 100s of documents and piecing them together. Reading the bibliography at the end of the book will convince you.
Books like this further embarass war apologisers and warhawks. They drive home the point that imperialistic wars have always been and will always be brutal and merciless. Books like this also provide the evidence that everyone suspects was there to begin with.
It might be easier to read about the already "known" side of the Vietnam war (the jungles, the leeches, the boobie traps etc) but the "Phoenix program" epitomises what this war was really about and how the killing , the torture and the general destruction were no results of isolated mishaps but rather a product of deliberate policy.

I really enjoy reading Mary Downing Hahn's books. This book gives a good introduction for teen readers to understand just a little bit from different points of view from war veterans. But I'll admit the book did move a little slower than her other books. But other than that, it was another good read with a surprising ending and touching chapters that made you keep reading.

December Stillness is a great, easy-to-read, story of a girl who wants to get to know a veteran for a school paper. The book is great!!! You can get inside of Kelly's head and feel what she feels. When with her frieds I could totally understand what was going on in her mind.

Bottom Line: Great book, must read!

December Stillness is one of the best books i've ever read. It is sad and could easily happen to anyone.This is Mary Dowing Hahn's best book. I'm not a major fan of realistic fiction but this book i could not put down. Mr.Weems who is a vietnam vet. had no friends and wanted no friends but was stumbled onto a girl named Kelly. She Eventually wanted to be her friend but he refused her. This book is an award winner and should be read by all who enjoys a great,unpredictable and sad novel. It touched my heart on how Kelly tried to help Mr. Weems and he refused her. All she wanted was a friend. I think this is a great teen novel. It has a great story to it and also a great lesson.

Mr Lannguths book is highly readable and an interesting observation of a very interesting period in history. Langguth is clearly a very good writer and the use of narrative and replayed conversation makes the book read like a novel. And that is exactly the deception...it is not a novel and it pretends to be an adequate reflection on the Viet Nam war. I am surprised that Mr Langguth is also described on the flap as a historian. The utter lack of analysis in the book is stunning; it is al description!

Thirthy years after the war I think a couple of things are clear;

1. The US should never have entered the conflict on this scale.

2. The North Vietnamese regime which took over after 1975 was, and is, one of the most oppressive in recent history.

So why doesn't the author spend a single page of analysis on why the Government brushed aside all doubt on the validity of the domino theory? Why doesn't he go into the reasons recommendations from people like Ball and Bundy were never properly discussed? After reading 300 pages this total lack of reflection started to be very disturbing.

Furthermore, what on earth does move the author to write in such sympathetic way about the North Vietnamese. I would certainly grant that the "ordinary soldier"in the NVA and VC believed in what they were doing. The Politburo however was nothing more than your ordinary run of the mill bunch of communist power players, ruthless and on a totally different level of ethics. Ho Chi Minh was not a Ghandi and Giap certainly not a Bolivar!

The replay of conversations becomes downright laughable when e.g. a discussion between Mao and some Vietnames leaders is described where Mao says that the leaders should live a sober life and be an example for their people. I can't imagine any trustworthy source for such quotes and to take interviews with senior Vietnames officials as a source is nothing more than naive.

I am not an American and therefore do not suffer the same trauma from this terrible conflict as many US citizens, but I am certain that thirty years after the war the American people deserves a lot more than this utterly unbalanced view.

The narrative of this book concentrates on the behind-the-scene maneuvering of politicians on all sides of the Vietnam War. Using widely available materials as well as information from his interviews of Americans, Vietnamese, Chinese, the author spun an irresistible story of the movers and shakers and their war-, and sometimes, peace-making efforts. I'd have given a five were it not for a number of issues:

- the author often used the Vietnamese first name as last name, including in the references. Some Vietnamese words were misspelled (for example, Chien Vich Phuong Hoang - the Phoenix program - should be Chien Dich Phuong Hoang.)

- the author interpersed the maneuverings of L. B. Johnson, H. Kissinger, Le Duan, Nguyen Cao Ky with individual stories of people who actually carried out their policies. Most South Vietnamese references are through published autobiographies or personal accounts of events, as opposed to author interviews. Therefore the story of the South Vietnam tends to be personalized by the Americans, the Vietnamese Communists, lacking personal views of pro-Republic of Vietnam individuals at similar levels. There are a few, but some of them, such as Tran Kim Tuyen, who was one time a SVN power broker, played little part in the South Vietnam for a long time. It's regrettable, because the author did try to be balanced.

Vietnam has been covered extensively in the contemporary press - so a bit of perspective is always useful. While Langguth is no historian, he has mapped the territory with diligence, and this volume needs to be considered as a journalistic tour-de-force. Langguth makes no apology for the subsequent behaviour of the Vietnamese regime post-1975. Any discussion on the history of Vietnam until April 1975 should not be confused with the post-1975 phase. Having said all this....

The book is great - the overall feeling is one of dismay and betrayal when you look at the course of events outlined by Langguth. As the author concludes, the American leadership let down both the Vietnamese people and the American people. Re-election politics governed the behaviour of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - both in terms of ignoring the reality on the ground as well as in terms of committing American air and ground forces. The latter had the effect of taking American lives, which is when the war became truly unpopular (and took thousands of Vietnamese lives). People like George Ball and McGeorge Bundy came around to the view that the war had no merits or interest for America early on, and there was no way they could express these views without losing the ear of the President they served.

I have read quite a bit of Kissinger, and for someone who has a lot of respect for Kissinger, Langguth's views on him come as a surprise. The view that emerges is that Kissinger essentially implemented the starting point of the negotiations arrived at by Harriman and Le Duc Tho in 1968 under Johnson. This is where the dismay comes in - five years later, the end-result was the same, and Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Langguth's representation of decisionmaking at the highest levels in the US makes for fascinating reading. The style of decision-making is collegial or chaotic depending on the president, and the impact of the president's style on the process comes out very well. Kennedy's youthful style and intellect, Johnson's homespun political smarts, and Nixon's insecure and paranoid approach - have their impact on the outcome and this is accentuated by the author. Johnson's earthy humour makes you laugh.. The internecine politicking between the members of the Cabinet would be useful education for any student of American politics. It would help understand why a man like Colin Powell continues to serve an admininstration that clearly has little time for him.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.