"John Wayne remains a constant in American popular culture. Middle America grew up with him in the late 1920s and 1930s, went to war with him in the 1940s, matured with him in the 1950s, and kept the faith with him in the 1960s and 1970s. . . . In his person and in the persona he so carefully constructed, middle America saw itself, its past, and its future. John Wayne was his country s alter ego."Thus begins John Wayne: American, a biography bursting with vitality and revealing the changing scene in Hollywood and America from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War. During a long movie...

This updated, expanded edition of Where the Domino Fell recounts the history of American involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II, clarifying the political aims, military strategy, and social and economic factors that contributed to the participants' actions.

• Revised and updated to include an examination of Vietnam through the point of view of the soldiers themselves, and brings the story up to the present day through a look at how the war has been memorialized
• A final chapter examines Vietnam through the lens of Oliver Stone's films and opens up a...