Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 248
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-7425-6008-6 • Paperback • November 2007 • $34.00 • (£25.00)
978-1-4616-6650-9 • eBook • November 2007 • $32.00 • (£25.00)
David Halberstam (1934–2007) was the author of 20 books, the last 14 of which have been national best-sellers. His most recent book, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, is about the Chinese entry into the Korean War. He was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Vietnam and was a member of the elective Society of American Historians.
Introduction
Part I: Edging Toward Calamity: Vietnam in the Early 1960s
Chapter 1: Coming into a Troubled Land
Chapter 2: Latter-Day Mandarins: The Ngo Family
Chapter 3: A Strange Alliance: The Americans and Diem
Part II: The War in the Delta
Chapter 4: In the Field with the ARVN
Chapter 5: Finding an Elusive Foe
Chapter 6: Disaster: The Battle of Ap Bac
Chapter 7: Collapse in the Delta
Part III: The Fall of the Diem Regime
Chapter 8: The Buddhist Revolt Begins
Chapter 9: The Raid on the Pagodas
Chapter 10: A Slow Change in American Policy
Chapter 11: The Saigon Press Controversy
Chapter 12: The Final Days of Ngo Dinh Diem
Chapter 13: What Should Be Done in Vietnam?
Epilogue: Return to Vietnam
For all the legions of books published on the Vietnam War, none surpasses one of the earliest and most prescient—David Halberstam's The Making of a Quagmire. Halberstam's shrewd observations of the complexities of Vietnamese politics and the obstacles the U.S. faced early in achieving its goals deeply inform the entire book. A brilliant study that has lost none of its power despite the history that unfolded after its publication, Halberstam's book deserves to be read again and again.
— Ellen Fitzpatrick, Carpenter Professor of History, University of New Hampshire
Few journalists did more to educate Americans about the harsh realities of the Vietnam war than David Halberstam. The Making of a Quagmire offers numerous insights into the conflict between the American press and the U.S. government that began in those years and ultimately played a major role in the war. The book is a valuable introduction to Vietnam in the era of John F. Kennedy and Ngo Dinh Diem.
— George C. Herring, University of Kentucky
As it did in 1965, Halberstam's book will provoke vigorous discussion. Readers will marvel at how the United States allowed itself to be so misled in South Vietnam and will use the book to make connections to more recent events in the Middle East.
— Robert Dallek
Halberstam's wartime work will last not just because of its quality and its importance but because it established a new mode of journalism, one with which Americans are now so familiar that it's difficult to remember that someone had to invent it.
— George Packer; The New Yorker
• Winner, 2007 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award (Reprint)