In college and high school classrooms across the United States, students display a keen interest in knowing more about what they rightly sense was a pivotal event in the recent past, one that brought a sea change in the life of the nation.

In a long-awaited alternative to the lengthy and overly expensive texts on the Vietnam War, Charles Neu presents America’s Lost War, a balanced, lively narrative account of that tragic conflict, one that sweeps across the whole time-span of the war and explores American, Vietnamese, and international perspectives. Recreating the physical and psychological landscape of the war, Neu fluidly describes policy disputes—among leaders of both the United States and North Vietnam—as well as individual policy makers, battles, and military realities, tracing the legacy of the “Vietnam” phenomenon that shapes American domestic politics and elections, as well as foreign relations, to the present day.