| Edition |
First Naval Institute Press paperback edition. |
| Description |
xvi, 398 pages. : illustrations, maps. ; 26 cm |
| Note |
Originally published: 2008. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-363) and index. |
| Contents |
Saigon-panier de crabes -- Making a start -- A nation begins to rise -- A bucket of eels and Operation Giai Phong -- The battle for Saigon -- Civic action -- South Vietnam stabilizes-Laos up for grabs -- Return to Vietnam -- Starting rural affairs -- An uneven path -- The Buddhist crisis -- Ambassador Lodge intervenes -- Meeting President Kennedy -- The overthrow of Diem -- The new regime -- Events go wrong -- General Taylor replaces Lodge -- The Lansdale mission -- Triumph of the bureaucrats -- Refusing to give up -- Change comes late -- Humphrey loses, Nixon takes over -- Tragic aftermath-and why -- Beyond Vietnam: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the future. |
| Summary |
Rufus Phillips offers an extraordinary inside history of the most critical years of American involvement in Vietnam, from 1954 to 1968, and explains why it still matters. Describing what went right and then wrong, he finds that our failure to understand the Communists, our South Vietnamese allies or even ourselves took us down the wrong road of a conventional war until it was too late--we missed the war's essential political character. Documenting the story from his own personal files, now available at the Texas Tech Vietnam Archive, as well as from the historical record, the former government official paints striking portraits of such key figures as John F. Kennedy, Maxwell Taylor, Robert McNamara, Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, and Ngo Dinh Diem, among others with whom he dealt. |
| Subject |
Phillips, Rufus.
|
|
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- United States.
|
|
Vietnam -- History -- 1945-1975.
|
| Added Author |
Holbrooke, Richard (Richard C.), 1941-2010. (NL-LeOCL)086652648
|
| ISBN |
1682473104 (paperback) |
|
9781682473108 (paperback) |
|
