Provides a comprehensive narrative history of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, giving full and unbiased treatment. It also discusses why Americans tried so hard to stop the spread of Communism into Indochina. And why they failed.Blending Vietnamese and American political, diplomatic, and military history, this book presents U.S. involvement in southeast Asia as an episode in the forty-year Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It also points out the French effort to reimpose colonialism on Vietnam. The third edition of History of the Vietnam War has been revised to include an expanded account of the postwar period, leading to the restoration of normal relations between the U.S. and Vietnam on July 11, 1995. It reveals the strong national identity of the Vietnamese people against Kennedy, a committed "Cold Warrior". It also analyzes media coverage of the war and the anti-war movement in the U.S., to demonstrate that neither really turned public opinion against the war.