Although the hostilities of the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the diplomatic repercussions lasted for several more decades. Eventually, however, the dedicated perseverance of diplomats on both sides paid off. In November 2003, Major General Pham Van Tra, defense minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, met with U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the halls of the Pentagon, signaling a new era in U.S.?Vietnamese defense relations. This book traces the development of that relationship in the years since the Vietnam War. It focuses especially on the 1990s, a decade in which the author...

Despite their insistence that the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops was the condition for the release of prisoners of war, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam took little action to account for American POWs at the end of the Vietnam War. Almost two decades would pass following the end of the war before significant internal political changes, shifting regional alignments, changing Western interests, Sino-Soviet rapprochement, a nonmilitary settlement of the Cambodian conflict, and the collapse of the Soviet Union would bring Hanoi to the point of recognizing the importance of mending its...

Dwight Hamilton Diller is a musician from West Virginia devoted to traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo music, and a seminary-trained minister steeped in local Christian traditions. For the past 40 years, he has worked to preserve archaic fiddle and banjo tunes, teaching his percussive, primitively rhythmic style to small groups in marathon banjo workshops. This book tells of Diller's life and music, his personal challenges and his decades of teaching an elusive musical form.