This clear, concise, and highly readable book is a must read for anybody who wants to understand the Vietnam War, its politics, critical decisions, effects on individuals who lived through it, and its reverberations in current American culture and foreign policy. It provides the reader with a greater understanding of the nature of war and personal experiences of those who served, and a feeling for the times usually only found in a novel. It is destined to become a standard reference for the history of the Vietnam War.