The Vietnam war is unique in its profound and continued influence upon American consciousness. It is not only the most important military conflict since the Second World War, but the United States'' most prolonged military engagement, and significantly the first war to receive widespread television coverage. Louise Brown's book makes a distinctive contribution to the available literature. It assumes little or no prior knowledge of the area, and it is unique in covering all aspects of the conflict, and in viewing its main features from a Vietnamese, as well as a `Western'' standpoint. The author combines a broad understanding of the background to the conflict in Vietnamese and world history with detailed material on US military tactics and the failure of pacification. There are chapters on subjects as diverse, and central, as the administrations of Johnson, Kennedy and Nixon; religion, culture and society in North and South Vietnam, and the nature of the `People's Revolutionary War'.