Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia

Still the best account of the last years of the Vietnam War, written by the author of the acclaimed Vietnam Shadows A gripping account of one of the century’s most harrowing human catastrophes―the fall of South Vietnam― Without Honor captures the tragedy and the irony of the Vietnam War’s last days and examines the consequences of the American military and political decisions that had sustained the war effort for a generation only to lead to the worst foreign policy failure in the nation’s history. Arnold Isaacs, who spent the final years of the war in Vietnam as a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun , describes his firsthand observations of the collapse of Cambodia and South Vietnam―from the 1973 Paris peace agreement to the American evacuation of Saigon and its aftermath―with heartbreaking detail, from the devastated battlefields and villages to the boats filled with terrified refugees. He also provides an historical record of unparalleled accuracy and depth about the strategic decisions made during the war’s end game and the intelligence failure that led Americans and their Southeast Asian allies to underestimate the strength and perseverance of the enemy. Drawing on previously classified military documents, field reports from American advisors, eyewitness accounts by soldiers and civilians, and North Vietnamese propaganda broadcasts, Isaacs offers a compelling and compassionate portrait of the impact of America’s “Vietnamization” of the conflict and a bracing indictment of political and military leaders in the United States and both Vietnams for the massive human suffering that accompanied the end of the war.