Studies Nixon's role in the war, including his advocacy of intervention in 1953, his struggle to appease all sides, his relationship with Kissinger, and his adoption of the "Madman Theory"--hinting he might use nuclear weapons. A convincing, devastating deconstruction of Richard Nixons and Henry Kissinger's Vietnam War policies that attempts to explode the ``peace-with-honor'' myth. Nixon spent a great deal of time after his resignation as president making a case for his foreign policy achievements. So, too, has former national security adviser Henry Kissinger. In many books, articles, and speeches, they have argued that they performed heroically in the Vietnam War. They claim they spent four years battling the duplicitous North Vietnamese, our intransigent South Vietnamese allies, a weak-willed, liberal Congress, a biased press, and a self-servingif not communist-inspireddomestic antiwar movement to forge a peace with honor in January 1973. That peace, Nixon and Kissinger contend, was subverted by North Vietnamese treachery and Congress's failure to support South Vietnam after the American troop pullout. Kimball (History/Univ. of Miami) delves deeply into Nixons and Kissinger's interpretations of their decisions on Vietnam, compares them to many primary sources, and finds the Nixon and Kissinger arguments ``incomplete, disingenuous and self-serving.'' Kimball backs up his highly critical judgement in great detail in this heavily documented account, which concentrates on the diplomatic aspects of Nixons and Kissinger's Vietnam policies. Kimball also looks at both men's psychological makeupdescribing Nixon as ``antisocial, paranoid, narcissistic, [and] passive-aggressive''and concludes that Nixon's oft-proclaimed ``peace with honor'' was a myth manufactured by administration spin doctors. Nixon's plan to end the war, Kimball says, was far from the well-organized, ``proactive'' strategy that the late president claimed. Nixon and Kissinger's four years of war-making, in Kimballs view, ``unnecessarily prolonged the war, with all of the baneful consequences of death, destruction and division for Vietnam and America that this brought about.'' Kimball puts Nixon's and Kissinger's Vietnam War maneuverings under a microscope and discovers a malignant cancer on the presidency. (History Book Club selection) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. "An enormously impressive work that lays bare the real Nixon and, along the way, reduces Nixon's version of the war to a legend of his own making. Will be the standard for understanding Richard Nixon and Vietnam-both central to our contemporary history."--Stanley Kutler, author of Abuse of Power and The Wars of Watergate "A major accomplishment. Far and away the best study of Nixon's Vietnam policies we are likely to have for some time."--George Herring, author of America's Longest War and LBJ and Vietnam "Kimball explains, as no historian has before, how Nixon and Kissinger conducted their complicated and devious Vietnam War diplomacy. Making brilliant use of new documentary sources and interviews from the American as well as the North Vietnamese side, he has made a singular contribution to our understanding of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and, even more important, to our understanding of that most fascinating of presidents, Richard M. Nixon."--Melvin Small, author of Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves "An important contribution to our understanding of a tragic period in American politics and diplomacy."--Herbert S. Parmet, author of Richard Nixon and His America "The most balanced and comprehensive study of the subject that we are likely to have for some time."--David Anderson, editor of Shadow on the White House: Presidents and the Vietnam War, 1945-1975 "A deeply necessary in-depth look at Nixon. Let us not soon forget."--Oliver Stone Jeffrey Kimball is professor of history at Miami University, Ohio, and editor of To Reason Why: The Debate about the Causes of American Involvement in the Vietnam War . Used Book in Good Condition