"A landmark work...The most complete account to date of the Vietnam tragedy." -The Washington Post Book World

This monumental narrative clarifies, analyzes, and demystifies the tragic ordeal of the Vietnam war. Free of ideological bias, profound in its undertsanding, and compassionate in its human portrayls, it is filled with fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with participants-French, American, Vietnamese, Chinese: diplomats, military commanders, high government officials, journalists, nurses, workers, and soldiers. Originally...

In a swiftly paced, brilliantly vivid narrative, Karnow focuses on the relationship that has existed between the two nations since the United States acquired the country from Spain in 1898, examing how we have sought to remake the Philippines 'in our image, ' an experiment marked from the outset by blundering, ignorance, and mutual misunderstanding.

In July 1947, fresh out of college and long before he would win the Pulitzer Prize and become known as one of America's finest historians, Stanley Karnow boarded a freighter bound for France, planning to stay for the summer. He stayed for ten years, first as a student and later as a correspondent for Time magazine. By the time he left, Karnow knew Paris so intimately that his French colleagues dubbed him "le plus parisien des Americains" --the most Parisian American.
Now, Karnow returns to the France of his youth, perceptively and wittily illuminating a time and place like none other....