...is in effect, a journal of the Vietnam war kept by a writer who is widely regarded as the leading authority on events in Vietnam over the last twenty-five years. Written from the scene as a series of reports to "The New Yorker", the book has the immediacy of recent experience and the depth that could only come from long and thorough knowledge of the country, its history and its people. The complex story of the last five years unfolds in brilliant and lucid detail: the nature of the military conflict; the political chaos in Saigon; the confrontation at the Paris talks with an adversary who regards negotiation as an extension of the fighting; the "struggle for men's hearts and minds" conducted in the Vietnamese hamlets, and the continuing contest for power that goes on at all levels of the shaky Saigon regime. We get a clear picture of the devastation the war has wrought - not only in terms of human casualties and physical havoc but also of the more subtle damage done to the whole fabric of Vietnamese society. We sense the quality of the men in whose hands the fate of Vietnam chiefly rests: the devious, close-mouthed President Nguyen Van Thieu; his flamboyant Vice-President and rival, Nguyen Cao Ky; the military genius of North Vietnam, General Vo Nguyen Giap; the formidably single-minded Ho Chi Minh, whose personality and ideas, despite his death, still influence the course of the war.