Loren Baritz has served as chairman of the Department of History at the University of Rochester, provost and acting chancellor at the State University of New York, and provost at the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of The Servants of Power, City on a Hill, and The Culture of the Twenties.

• Preface, 1998PrefacePart I: Tinder: The Myths we Take to WarChapter 1. God's Country and American Know-HowPart II: Fire: Decisions That Made the WarChapter 2. The Chain to VietnamChapter 3. The Invention of South VietnamChapter 4. War by the NumbersChapter 5. The Politics of EgoPart III: Backfire: Bureaucracy at WarChapter 6. Enabling IgnoranceChapter 7. The WarriorsChapter 8. The American LullabyNotes Index

Baritz's emphasis on the underlying assumptions that motivated American policy makers and the vigor and unconcealed emotion with which he writes give these pages an impact they would not otherwise have... It reminds us with eloquence, power and passion that war is a form of intercourse with other peoples that unveils the deepest assumptions that a nation makes about itself and its relationship to the outside world. Los Angeles Times