Ho Chi Minh: the untried gamble / Robert Shaplen -- The United States, France, and the First Indochina War / George C. Herring -- Dwight D. Eisenhower and wholehearted support of Ngo Dinh Diem / David L. Anderson -- Geneva, 1954: the precarious peace / Ellen J. Hammer -- The CIA comes to Vietnam / Edward Geary Lansdale -- No "non-essential areas": Kennedy and Vietnam / Herbert S. Parmet -- The Tonkin Gulf Resolution / Robert McNamara -- Groping toward escalation / Lloyd C. Gardner -- The Tet Offensive / Larry Berman -- A dissenter in the government / George W. Ball -- Bombing Hanoi, mining Haiphong, and the Moscow Summit / Stephen E. Ambrose -- The failure of force / Gareth Porter -- Stabbed in the back / William Colby -- The birth of the National Liberation Front / Truong Nhu Tang, with David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai -- The people and the Americans / Konrad Kellen -- Why the communists won / William Duiker -- The National Liberation Front and the land / Tom Mangold and John Penycate -- Getting hit / Philip Caputo -- Feeling cold / Wallace Terry -- Nursing and disillusionment / Lynda van Devanter -- "They did not know good from evil" / Tim O'Brien -- Assessing the military's performance / Bruce Palmer, Jr. -- Military mismanagement / Loren Baritz -- My Lai: the killing begins / Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim -- The war in Laos / Timothy N. Castle -- Bombing Cambodia: a critique / William Shawcross -- Bombing Cambodia: a defense / Henry A. Kissinger -- A clash of cultures / Frances FitzGerald -- A bureaucratic tangle / James C. Thomson. Jr. -- An act of imperialism / Noam Chomsky -- A defense of freedom / Norman Podhoretz -- A perfect technowar / James William Gibson -- Working-class war / Christian G. Appy -- Seeds of a movement / Tom Wells -- Women at the barricades, then and now / Myra MacPherson -- Returning to South Vietnam / Neil Sheehan -- A deserter and his family / Gloria Emerson -- Agent Orange and the wall at home / Bobbie Ann Mason -- Letting go / Le Ly Hayslip.