Introduction -- Beauty and many beasts -- The "dirty war" -- The fortress that never was -- Bloody footprints -- The twin tyrannies -- Some of the way with JFK -- 1963: coffins for two presidents -- The maze -- Into the Gulf -- "We are puzzled about how to proceed" -- The escalator -- "Trying to grab smoke" -- Graft and peppermint oil -- Rolling thunder -- Taking the pain -- "Waist deep in the Big Muddy" -- Our guys, their guys: the Vietnamese war -- Tet -- The giant reels -- Continuous replays -- Nixon's inheritance -- Losing by installments -- Collateral damage -- The biggest battle -- Big ugly fat fellers -- A kiss before dying -- The last act -- Afterward

Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle