Vietnam : a history (Rev. and updated [ed.])

This Pulitzer Prize-winning account of one of this century's most controversial wars is filled with revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with hundreds of participants on both sides.

The central theme of the book is that America's leaders, prompted as much by domestic politics as by global ambitions, carried the United States into South-east Asia with little regard for the realities of the region.

The chain of events that led to the deployment of thousands of American troops has been set into its deeper historical context - especially the growth of Vietnamese nationalism over two millennia.