Kennedy in Vietnam; A Prelude to War: American Vietnam Policy, 1960-1963 [Subtitle from Dust Jacket]

New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, N.Y.. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvii, [1], 252, [2] pages. Illustrations. Maps. DJ is in a plastic sleeve. Introduction. Epilogue. Appendix: Source Notes. The Road to War: A Vietnam Chronology. List of Abbreviations. Index. Topics covered include Kill all the Paratroopers!; We Must Change Our Course; A Certain Dilemma; A Slowly Escalating Stalemate; More Vigor is Needed; Who Are These People?; The Point of No Return; We Must All Sign On; Plausible Denial; and Nine, Nine...Nine, Nine. Bill Rust is the author of five books about US relations with Southeast Asian nations. Born in Washington, D.C., he began his editorial career at U.S. News and World Report, joining the Book Division as a researcher and subsequently contributing retrospective articles on the Vietnam War to the magazine. His most recent book, "The Mask of Neutrality: The United States and Decolonization in Indonesia, 1942-1950," is a deeply researched account of official US relations with Indonesia before, during, and after that nation's revolution. Like Rust's earlier histories, "The Mask of Neutrality" is an "origin story" that shows the beginning of America's disastrous engagement with Southeast Asia in the middle of the twentieth century. This book examines America's Vietnam policy under the Kennedy administration, and provides the historical focus to address critical and enduring speculations on what course of action President Kennedy might have pursued had his presidency not been foreshortened by assassination. "Rust's Book, Kennedy in Vietnam, based on thousands of hours of interviews he and his colleagues at the magazine U.S. News and World Report conducted with former officials who had served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, provided the first sustained analysis of Kennedy's policies and the fullest portrayal yet of JFK as a conflicted warrior. Kennedy in Vietnam also offered a fuller account of what many saw as Kennedy's most fateful policy: to support the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem in the fall of 1963."A Companion to John F. Kennedy, Marc J. Selverstone, 2014.