Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY i>The Washington Post * The Christian Science Monitor * The Globe and Mail LONGLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE /b> he struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in all the world's powers and saw two of them-first France, then the United States-attempt to subdue the revolutionary Vietnamese forces. For France, the defeat marked the effective end of her colonial empire, while for America the war left a gaping wound in the body politic that remains open to this day. How did it happen? Tapping into newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and making full use of the published literature, distinguished scholar Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to lose their way in Vietnam. Embers of War opens in 1919 at the Versailles Peace Conference, where a young Ho Chi Minh tries to deliver a petition for Vietnamese independence to President Woodrow Wilson. It concludes in 1959, with a Viet Cong ambush on an outpost outside Sai

Fredrik Logevall is John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and professor of history at Cornell University, where he serves as director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

A balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war. * Pulitzer Prize citation * A monumental history . . . a widely researched and eloquently written account of how the U.S. came to be involved in Vietnam . . . certainly the most comprehensive review of this period to date. * Wall Street Journal * Fredrik Logevall's excellent book "Choosing War "(1999) chronicled the American escalation of the Vietnam War in the early 1960s. With "Embers of "War, he has written an even more impressive book about the French conflict in Vietnam and the beginning of the American one. . . . It is the most comprehensive history of that time. Logevall, a professor of history at Cornell University, has drawn from many years of previous scholarship as well as his own. And he has produced a powerful portrait of the terrible and futile French war from which Americans learned little as they moved toward their own engagement in Vietnam. * The New York Times Book Review-Editor's Choice * This is an excellent study of this crucial period in post-war history, and a compelling account both of the French struggle in Vietnam and the way in which the United States was dragged into a war she couldn't really win. * History of War 03/08/2015 * "Embers of War", a remarkable new history of the first Vietnamese war by Fredrik Logevall * The Economist *