For the past several years, I've been reading biographies of the Presidents in order. Whenever I got to a President who had a war during his administration, I read a history of the war. I finished Kennedy a year or so ago and am waiting for Caro to finish his four-volumes on Johnson. I figured it was time to read about Vietnam. The war was such a negative aspect of my teenage years that I've always tuned it out, so I didn't know much. I looked all over the web for recommendations, and everything pointed to this book. I've never fully understood how we could lose the war. Now I know. The U.S. got itself in the position of trying to support a South Vietnam government more interested in money than governing. We fought defensively and let North Vietnam call the shots. We never went into N.V. except to bomb because we feared Chinese and Russian involvement. Under those circumstances, there's no way we could have won.