Edited by Stephen Sherman
Published by Casemate
Philadelphia & Oxford

A Vietnam Veterans for Factual History (VVFH) Book
Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-367-2
$38.00 USD

Contents

Introduction by Andrew R. Finlayson (Col. USMC Ret) v
About the Author xi
Part I The Beginnings (1945-1954)
Part II Beginnings of United States Involvement (1955-1963)
Part III Deepening US Involvement (1963-1968)
Part IV Conclusion of US Involvement (1968-1975)
Apendix A The Path to Vietnam
Selected Bibliography
Endnotes
Index

Thomas J. Corcoran (1920-1994) graduated from St. John's University in New York. During World War II, he served in the Navy, before beginning his Foreign Service career in 1948. His first assignments abroad were in Spain and then, in 1950 in Hanoi and Hue in Vietnam, which was at that time under French control. He was Chargé d'Affaires ad interim (Laos) from August 1975 to March 1978 and then became Ambassador to Burundi from 1978 until retiring from the State Department in 1980. Mr. Corcoran graduated from both the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, VA, and the National War College in Washington, D.C. Mr. Corcoran was a secretary and governor of DACOR (Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired).

"A rigorously objective Foreign Service Officer, Thomas Corcoran has written a clear, concise history of American decisions seeking to protect the independence of South Vietnam as a homeland for Vietnamese nationalists seeking to preserve and assert their values after French colonial subjugation from the end of World War II until the Peace Agreement of 1972. As Corcoran records with evidence and dispassion, the United States remained steadfast to its political objectives of defending the rights of a small nationality so different in customs and so far away from the American homeland." --Stephen B. Young, formerly CORDS Advisor to Vietnam, author of Kissinger's Betrayal: How America Lost the War in Vietnam