The Long Rain of Fire

For thirty years the war in Vietnam consumed everything it touched: a French empire, an American presidency and then another, three million Vietnamese lives by the highest estimates, and 58,220 American ones — along with America's certainty about itself.

Here is the whole story, told from all sides: the thousand-year nation that outlasted China and France; Ho Chi Minh quoting Jefferson in Ba Dinh Square while Washington looked away; Dien Bien Phu and a country cut in two; Diem, the burning monk, and a coup that trapped America in its own creation; the Marines at Da Nang, Ia Drang, and the years of search-and-destroy; the tunnels of Cu Chi and the trail that could not be cut; Tet, Hue, and My Lai; a home front torn apart from Chicago to Kent State; Nixon's secret war, the Christmas bombing, and a peace that was only an interval; the Convoy of Tears, Xuan Loc, and the helicopters of April 1975; and the long aftermath — the boat people, Agent Orange, the Wall, and the astonishing handshake that made enemies into partners.

Drawing on the Pentagon Papers, the great histories, and voices from Hanoi, Saigon, and Washington alike, this is the Vietnam War told whole — a tragedy in three acts, and the fire that forged the world we live in now.