About the book: 2017 / America's participation in Vietnam began in secrecy. Thirty years later it ended in failure, witnessed by the whole world. It was started with good intentions by decent people as a result of fatal misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War miscalculations. And it dragged on because, it would seem, it was easier to slip through than to admit that it was caused by the tragic decisions made by five American presidents belonging to both political parties. Before the end of the war, more than 58,000 Americans died. During the conflict, no one died either. less than 250 thousand South Vietnamese troops. More than a million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas also died. Two million civilians are believed to have died in both the north and south of the country, as well as tens of thousands in the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. For many Vietnamese it was a brutal civil war; for others, it was the bloody culmination of a century-long struggle for independence. For Americans who fought in the war and those who fought against it at home, as well as those who only glimpsed it on the evening news, the Vietnam War was a decade of agony, the most divisive period since the Civil War. Vietnam seemed to question everything: the value of honor and valor, the qualities of cruelty and mercy, the integrity of the American government, and what it means to be a patriot. And those who lived through the war and could not erase the memory of it continue to argue about what really happened, who is to blame, why everything went so bad and whether it was worth it.