Embers of War

Advance praise for Embers of War

"A monumental history . . . a widely researched and eloquently written account of how the U.S. came to be involved in Vietnam . . . certainly the most comprehensive review of this period to date."-Wall Street Journal

"[A] superbly written and well-argued reinterpretation of our tragic experience in Vietnam."-Booklist

"[Logevall] masterfully presents the war's roots in the U.S. reaction to the French colonial experience."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Fascinating, beautifully-written . . . Logevall's account provides much new detail and important new insights. . . . It is impossible not to read the book without being struck by contemporary parallels."-Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy

"An encompassing, lucid account of the 40-year arc in which America's Southeast Asian adventure became inevitable . . . Logevall's prose is clean, his logic relentless, his tone unsparing, his vision broad and deep, his empathy expansive."-Vietnam Magazine

"Fredrik Logevall has gleaned from American, French, and Vietnamese sources a splendid account of France's nine-year war in Indochina and the story of how the American statesmen of the period allowed this country to be drawn into the quagmire."-Neil Sheehan, author of A Bright Shining Lie, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

"Fredrik Logevall is a wonderful writer and historian. In his new book on the origins of the American war in Vietnam, he gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the French war and its aftermath, from the perspectives of the French, the Vietnamese, and the Americans. Using previously untapped sources and a deep knowledge of diplomatic history, Logevall shows to devastating effect how America found itself on the road to Vietnam."-Frances FitzGerald, author of Fire in the Lake, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

"In a world full of nascent, potentially protracted wars, Fredrik Logevall's Embers of War is manifestly an important book, illuminating the long, small-step path we followed into the quagmire of Vietnam. But I was also struck by the quality of Logevall's writing. He has the eye of a novelist, the cadence of a splendid prose stylist, and a filmmaker's instinct for story. Embers of War is not just an important book of history, it is an utterly compelling read."-Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"Embers of War is a truly monumental achievement. With elegant prose, deft portraits of the many fascinating characters, and remarkable sensitivity to the aspirations and strategies of the various nations involved, Logevall skillfully guides us through the complexities of the First Indochina War and demonstrates how that conflict laid the basis for America's war in Vietnam."-George C. Herring, author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975

"In this vividly written, richly textured history, Fredrik Logevall demolishes the fiction, too long indulged by too many Americans, that the Vietnam War appeared out of nowhere to besmirch the 1960s. Here we have the full backstory-the uneasy collaboration between France and the United States that paved the way for epic tragedy. Embers of War is a magisterial achievement."-Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War and Professor of International Relations and History, Boston University

"For too long, Americans have debated the Vietnam War as though it started in the 1960s. As Fredrik Logevall masterfully demonstrates in Embers of War, the American imbroglio has deep roots in the 1940s and 1950s. This is a deeply researched, elegantly written account that will instantly become the standard book on a poorly understood and decisively important event in world history."-Mark Lawrence, author of The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and Associate Professor of History and Senior Fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at The University of Texas at Austin

"Fredrik Logevall gives us an extraordinary account of how Americans, overestimating their own power and underestimating the historical morass they were entering, committed themselves to a twenty-year war against the Vietnamese. Beautifully told and exhaustively researched in French and Vietnamese as well as U.S. sources, Twilight War is now the standard for understanding how the United States became immersed in Vietnam while appearing to a great many Vietnamese themselves as ‘just another big, white Western power, there to impose her will on them, to tell them how to conduct their affairs.' More than a half century later, and a decade after 9/11, it remains true that the more things change, the more they remain the same-at least to those ignorant of the story Logevall tells."-Walter LaFeber, author of The American Age: The U.S. at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present and Andrew and James Tisch University Professor Emeritus, Cornell University

"It is the most important question of America's past half century: Why did we go to war in Vietnam? The answers are all here in Fredrik Logevall's magnificent, panoramic account of the long-term origins of our doomed conflict in Indochina. By going back to the early years, from World War II through the 1950s, Logevall shows that Americans were deeply engaged in France's ‘twilight war' from its very beginning, but failed-tragically-to learn any lessons from France's miserable defeat. Instead, hubris, naiveté, idealism, and expansive global ambitions led American leaders to believe they could succeed where others had failed. This sensitive, impeccably researched book is a true masterwork, written by one of our most imaginative and talented historians. And it is a must-read for anyone interested in America's continuing penchant for overseas interventions."-William I. Hitchcock, author of The Bitter Road to Freedom and professor of history, University of Virginia

"In the rush to get to ‘America's war' in Vietnam, scholars have given remarkably short shrift to the first one. In this path-breaking account of the making of America's Vietnam, Fredrik Logevall places the Indochina War, the crumbling of the French Empire, and American intervention in Vietnam at the center of his analysis. It's a revolutionary shift in perspective and periodization, based on impressive archival research, the careful mining of untapped memoirs, and an unparalleled mastery of the latest scholarship in the field. It is also a highly readable account of one of the most important yet poorly understood conflicts of the twentieth century. For those who want to understand this first war and how and why the United States became involved in it, there is no better place to start than with Logevall's magnificent Embers of War."-Christopher Goscha, professor of international relations, Université du Québec à Montréal