Vietnam War - United States - Political Aspects, Southeast Asia - Politics & Government, 20th Century American History - Relations - General & Miscellaneous, Asia, Australasia & Oceania - Diplomatic Relations with the U.S., Asia - Diplomatic Relations - G

A death in November

Name: A death in November
Author: Ellen J. Hammer
ISBN: 9780525242109

by Ellen J. Hammer

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Overview

The time: January-November 1963. The place: Saigon. The circumstances: the subversion from inside and out of a fledgling nation, and the promotion, by some of the Kennedy administration's arrogant and uncomprehending high officials, of a group of Vietnamese generals' treachery. The result: the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu in a military coup just three weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy.
Hammer's riveting in-depth chronicle of that crucial year demonstrates how this military coup transformed the Vietnam war into an American war. Having often visited the embattled nation of South Vietnam in this period and having interviewed key characters in the drama, she also draws on previously classified documents and other sources, including many unpublished ones. Portraying the Vietnamese protagonists in a Vietnamese context, Hammer cuts away layer after layer of double-talk to expose the incomprehension and mistrust between Americans and Vietnamese that destroyed Diem's independent government. A Death in November reveals how the coup, which led to the United States' open control of the war effort, set in motion an ever-widening tragedy.

About the Author, Ellen J. Hammer

About the Author: Ellen J. Hammer, the author of the acclaimed The Struggle for Indochina, has been closely associated with Vietnam affairs for over thirty years.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

American policy in Vietnam takes a severe and convincing drubbing in this deeply researched book by the author of the renowned Struggle for Indochina. Hammer tells the story of President Ngo Dinh Diem's final 10 months in office, ending with his assassination, and if there was any doubt about American complicity in the sorry affair, that doubt is dispelled here. In one of the book's most shocking passages, the author describes how Henry Cabot Lodge, the newly appointed ambassador, called a meeting to consider ways of organizing a coup d'etat on the very day he arrived in Saigoneven before he had presented his credentials at Gia Long Palace. She charges that President Kennedy, about to meet his fate in Dallas, made plans to inform Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk that the American government would not have him killed. The American officials' simplistic view of the situation in Vietnam in 1963 and their chilling indifference to the fate of Diem (and that of his brother and closest adviser) are exposed here in excoriating detail. (March 30)

Library Journal

The death in the title was that of Ngo Dinh Diem, America's ally and South Vietnam's president, assassinated by his own generals. The outline of this incident, which marked a major turning point in the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, is well known, but the story has never been told in such a riveting fashion as it is here. Hammer, a keen student of Vietnamese affairs for nearly 40 years and a first-hand observer of many of the events she describes, argues convincingly that Diem was far from a U.S. puppet and that his murder was a direct result of policies authorized by the Kennedy administration. Though well documented and written with scholarly authority, this will appeal to general readers as well as a scholarly audience. John H. Boyle, History Dept., California State Univ., Chico