Was the Vietnam War a tragic mistake? Or was it, as President Ronald Reagan would claim, "a noble cause"? In an enthralling book, Newbery Medalist Russell Freedman provides a succinct account of perhaps the most puzzling and contentious of America's wars. Describing how a superpower caught up in Cold War politics became increasingly enmeshed in a conflict over 8,000 miles away, he then explains why twenty years later an exit was so difficult. In words...

Traces the history of the Asian war that killed over 58,000 Americans, discussing the causes and effects, leaders, major battles, guerrilla warfare, aerial bombing, weaponry, peace negotiations, and lessons learned.

Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

"Learn how the United States ended up fighting for twenty years in a remote country on the other side of the world. The Vietnam War was as much a part of the tumultuous Sixties as Flower Power and the Civil Rights Movement. Five US presidents were convinced that American troops could end a war in the small, divided country of Vietnam and stop Communism from spreading in Southeast Asia. But they were wrong, and the result was the death of 58,000 American...