In Country

John Prados is widely recognized as one of the foremost historians of the Vietnam War and of national security affairs. A Columbia University Ph.D., he is a senior fellow at the National Security Archives. His widely reviewed and award-winning books include Presidents' Secret Wars, Pentagon Games, Keepers of the Keys, Inside the Pentagon Papers, The Blood Road, Valley of Decision, The Hidden History of the Vietnam War, Combined Fleet Decoded, and Normandy Crucible: The Decisive Battle that Shaped World War II in Europe. Mr. Prados lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

• 1 A Brief Overview 2 Ia Drang 3 In the Highlands 4 Saigon and the Delta 5 Eye Corps 6 Vietnam Days 7 War in the Plains 8 Indian Country 9 Tet I: Saigon and the Countryside 10Tet II: Hue and Khe Sanh 11Life on the Line 12 The Abrams Era 13 The Final Act 14 Air War

National Security Archives historian Prados, who has long specialized in the Vietnam War (Inside the Pentagon Papers), presents a compendium of first-person accounts of the American war. Although most of the voices are those of American service personnel and North and South Vietnamese military veterans, Prados also includes a sprinkling of civilian participants, including CIA operatives. (All of the words are excerpted from previously published material.) The book contains a brief overview of the war’s history, and short introductions to each entry. The voices offer a message that is not political, writes Prados. Rather, 'it is one built from the ordeals and adventures of men and women thrown into the maelstrom of this war.' Some of those men and women will be familiar to students of the Vietnam War: Philip Caputo, Fred Downs, W.D. Ehrhart, Ronald Glasser, David Hackworth, Hal Moore, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, Jack Smith, Ray Stubbe, Hugh Thompson, Lynda Van Devanter, Bruce Weigl. A preponderance of the witnesses are officers, and only a scarce handful are support personnel. Still, this is a valuable collection of primary source material that succeeds in the author’s goal of recapturing 'the smell and the taste of Vietnam' and the on-the-ground experiences of those who fought there.