America in Vietnam: Illusion, Myth and Reality by Guenter Lewy

Guenther Lew's "America in Vietnam" is a fair, even-handed and succinct single volume history of our long, tortured history in Vietnam, from America's reluctant support of the French in the early 1950's to the final, ignominious withdrawal from Saigon in 1975, after Congress pulled the rug out from under South Vietnam when it suspended all funding. Lew's book has the benefit of being written several years after the war ended, so it has the perspective that much of the earlier writing - on both sides of the issue - lacked. Additionally, the author wrote as an academic, not a participant or partisan in the debate, so his view was not colored by the drama of personal experience. Lewy is a judicious writer who carefully and dispassionately weighs the evidence and then draws conclusions. He covers all the controversial aspects of the war - the strategic calculus that led to our initial involvement in the 1950's and the escalation in the 1960's, the manner and methods that the United States used to fight the war, the specter of criminality on part of American soldiers and their communist adversaries and issue of the justness of the war. In about five-hundred pages, Guenther Lewy provides the reader with a well-written synthesis of the many streams of intelligence that were available to a diligent and honest researcher in the 1970's. Despite its age, this is a classic account of one of the most divisive events in American history.