Although the trajectory of developments underlined the step-by-step deepening American involvement, Logevall is too good a historian to imply 'inevitability' as he repeatedly stresses how policymakers confronted a series of short-term choices that led toward the 'quagmire' of which David Halberstam famously wrote in the 1960s.Īt the heart of the story is the resilience of the Communist-led nationalist movement, known after 1941 as the Viet Minh. Writing in a lucid and vivid style, Logevall captures the dramatic events and personalities - Vietnamese, American, French and others - that transformed Vietnam from a French colony to Cold War battleground.

A Cornell University historian who wrote the well-received 'Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam' (1999), Logevall draws on a substantial secondary literature and archival research to analyze the interplay of Vietnamese nationalism with international upheavals marked by World War II, the Cold War and the demise of Western imperialism. Eye-opening and compulsively readable, Embers of War is a gripping, heralded work that illuminates the hidden history of the French and American experiences in Vietnam.Both orthodox and revisionist historians thus acknowledge the significance of the political-military context of American involvement.įredrik Logevall's 'Embers of War' stands as the definitive history of the critical formative period from 1940 to 1960.

An epic story of wasted opportunities and deadly miscalculations, Embers of War delves deep into the historical record to provide hard answers to the unanswered questions surrounding the demise of one Western power in Vietnam and the arrival of another. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina-and shows how, from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history. Tapping newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations, Fredrik Logevall traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Written with the style of a great novelist and the intrigue of a Cold War thriller, Embers of War is a landmark work that will forever change your understanding of how and why America went to war in Vietnam.

Embers of war logevall