Description based upon print version of record.

Table of Contents; List of Maps; Foreword; Preface; PART I: THE BIRTH OF SOUTH VIETNAM 1954-56; Prologue; 1. Saigon-Panier de Crabes; 2. Making a Start; 3. A Nation Begins to Rise; 4. A Bucket of Eels and Operation Giai Phong; 5. The Battle for Saigon; 6. Civic Action; 7. South Vietnam Stabilizes-Laos Up for Grabs; PART II: SOUTH VIETNAM AT RISK 1960-63; Prologue; 8. Return to Vietnam; 9. Starting Rural Affairs; 10. An Uneven Path; 11. The Buddhist Crisis; 12. Ambassador Lodge Intervenes; 13. Meeting President Kennedy; 14. The Overthrow of Diem; 15. The New Regime

PART III: HOPE AND FRUSTRATION 1964-1968Prologue; 16. Events Go Wrong; 17. General Taylor Replaces Lodge; 18. The Lansdale Mission; 19. Triumph of the Bureaucrats; 20. Refusing to Give Up; 21. Change Comes Late; PART IV: THE FINAL ACT-AND THE FUTURE; 22. Humphrey Loses, Nixon Takes Over; 23. Tragic Aftermath-and Why; 24. Beyond Vietnam: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Future; Acknowledgments; Notes; Cast of Characters; Glossary; Note on Sources; Index; About the Author

In The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam described Rufus Phillips as a man one could trust telling President Kennedy during the Vietnam War about the failures of the Strategic Hamlet Program, 'in itself a remarkable moment in the American bureaucracy, a moment of intellectual honesty.' With that same honesty, Phillips gives an extraordinary inside history of the most critical years of American involvement in Vietnam, from 1954 to 1968, and explains why it still matters. Describing what went right and then wrong, he argues that the United States missed an opportunity to help.