FIRE AND RAIN

A comprehensive history of the late stages of the Vietnam War.

Eisenberg, a professor of U.S. history and foreign relations, is nothing if not thorough in her coverage of the nasty politics, frustrating diplomacy, and stormy homefront. She makes regular detours to the battlefield but emphasizes the roles of two larger-than-life American leaders—Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger—who aimed to bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion and failed. The author draws on a vast amount of declassified documents, “an avalanche of material about [the Nixon] presidency that has appeared over the previous fif­teen years,” offering “more insights into the foreign policy operations of an administration than we are likely to see again.” Eisenberg, a veteran scholar of the era, delivers these insights in mostly lucid prose, creating a meticulously researched narrative about a deplorable episode in American history that, with more information, becomes even more deplorable. Nixon took office in 1969 with the promise of ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam. A few years later, the last American soldier had left, but even readers who experienced that period will squirm at Eisenberg’s expert account of how it happened. Although she cuts away regularly to the war, this is mostly a geopolitical history emphasizing the actions of Nixon and Kissinger, his pugnacious national security adviser. Both agreed with military leaders that North Vietnam would accept a satisfactory peace only in response to painful losses on the battlefield. At the same time, Nixon announced that troop withdrawals would begin immediately, infuriating the military but pleasing Congress, the media, and the widespread anti-war movement. This mixed message failed to discourage the North Vietnamese, and Eisenberg’s compelling yet painful text never fully explains why Nixon and Kissinger persisted for four years in a policy guaranteed to fail—at the cost of another 20,000 Americans and “between one and two million Asians,” mostly civilian and innocent.

An authoritative history showing the perils of “selective vision of people in power.”