A Better War: the Unexamined Victories and the Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam - Hardcover

Sorley, Lewis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151002665 ISBN 13: 9780151002665

Publisher: Harcourt Brace International, 1999

Synopsis

Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing on authoritative materials not previously available, including thousands of hours of tape-recorded allied councils of war, award-winning military historian Lewis Sorley has given us what has long been needed-an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these important years. Among his findings is that the war was being won on the ground even as it was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress. The story is a great human drama of purposeful and principled service in the face of an agonizing succession of lost opportunities, told with uncommon understanding and compassion. Sorley documents the dramatic differences in conception, conduct, and-at least for a time-results between the early and the later war. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better War is sure to stimulate controversy as it sheds brilliant new light on the war in Vietnam.

About this title

Review:

"Sorley's book is as important a reexamination of the operational course of the war as Robert McNamara's In Retrospect is of the conflict's moral and political history."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An extraordinary piece of work that is bound to become a valuable part of historical documentation about the war in Vietnam. The first to set the record straight concerning the outcome of that conflict."--H. Norman Schwarzkopf, General, U.S. Army, Retired

From the Back Cover:

The hot book among Iraq strategists. --David Ignatius, The Washington Post
Lewis Sorley s important and influential book A Better War sheds light on the often neglected final years in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 and revises our knowledge of the war and its conclusion. Drawing on his exclusive access to still classified tape-recorded meetings of the highest levels of military command in Vietnam, Sorley highlights the dramatic differences in the conception, the conduct, and--at least for a time--the results after General Creighton Abrams succeeded to the top military post in 1968. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better War is an insightful history and a great human drama of purposeful and principled service in the face of an agonizing succession of lost opportunities--and it is never as important as it is now.
"A comprehensive and long-overdue examination of the immediate post-Tet offensive years." --The New York Times

"The book is the missing link in the history of the Vietnam War. It opens the old arguments up again and shows them in a new light." --Strategic Review

"[A Better War] is an outstanding piece of work, historically important with its use of new evidence, intellectually challenging with its suggestion of new interpretations of events, and highly readable." --Army
Lewis Sorley, a third-generation graduate of West Point, also holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. He has served in the U.S. Army, on staff at the Pentagon, and later as a senior civilian official of the Central Intelligence Agency. He lives in Maryland."

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt Brace International
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0151002665
• ISBN 13: 9780151002665
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528