involvement, by which time the Viet Minh see the U.S. He then covers the French war in Indochina that followed, ending with the period between French and U.S. Logevall takes us from the end of the First World War, when the future of the French empire is accepted as a matter of fact, through the interwar period to the Second World War, when it is at its weakest. Two major forces are at play in Logevall’s work: the history of decolonization and the history of the Cold War. At well over 800 pages, Logevall’s work, surprisingly, is as accessible as it is lengthy.
His newest book however, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, is something of a prequel, which analyzes the roots of America’s involvement, beginning with the French war. Knight Professor of International Studies, director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and professor of history at Cornell University, himself wrote such a volume, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam, detailing the process of U.S. Indeed, this lack of coverage is reinforced by the countless books describing the American war in the 1960s.
To the casual student of history and foreign affairs, France’s war in Vietnam is typically a brief aside in a 50-minute lecture about America’s Vietnam War that goes something like, “ You can’t truly understand America’s war in Vietnam without understanding the Franco-Indochina war,” stressing its importance, but not going much further.
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