Death of a Generation

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Death of a Generation:
How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War
(pa-perback)
by Howard Jones (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jones (Mutiny on the Amistad) delivers an informative narrative documenting in rather elaborate detail a popular theory of JFK and Vietnam advanced previously by such writers as Richard Mahoney and Richard Reeves: that had Kennedy lived, U.S. involvement in Vietnam would not have escalated as it did. There were 685 U.S. advisers in Vietnam on the day Kennedy was inaugurated president in early 1961. Less than three years later, in October 1963, the U.S. had 16,732 American troops in place. Despite this escalation, Kennedy was never wholly convinced of the wisdom of American involvement in Vietnam. Minutes of the September 6, 1963, National Security Council meeting, two weeks after Kennedy gave the go-ahead for the over--throw of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, show Robert Kennedy openly questioning whether Communist takeover of the South could be successfully resisted, regardless of whether Diem remained in place or not. The president himself is on record even earlier, in April 1962, as telling his aides to "seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our involvement." Hawks such as Dean Rusk in Kennedy's cabinet (shortly inherited by LBJ) did not agree. Jones, like most scholars in recent memory, argues that the instability of Diem's government, followed by the assassinations of Diem and JFK, combined to create an environment where escalation of American involvement in Vietnam became inevitable, thus triggering what Jones terms "the death of a generation." Although not advancing an original thesis, Jones, a historian at the University of Alabama, goes deeper into the existing evidence supporting this thesis than have most other writers, and does so in a highly readable manner.

Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"In Death of a Generation, historian Howard Jones advances the theory that President John F. Kennedy, had he lived, would have pursued his withdrawal plan from Vietnam. This is a 'what if' book, and lay historians may wonder whether such a book has a place in history. The answer in this case is a strong affirmative. 'What if' histories make a useful contribution when they treat events that clearly bear on decisions of the present."--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"A major piece of scholarship.... The account of the events leading up to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is particularly good, and the assessment of its dire effect on the nature of the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam, convincing."--Foreign Affairs

"Superb analysis of the 1963 Buddhist crisis."--Reviews in American History

"Jones's new work [is] the most comprehensive and credible yet"--Toronto Globe and Mail

"Argues quite convincingly that had the coup not been bungled and Johnson not propelled to leadership, Vietnam may have ended quite differently--almost certainly not in the deaths of 58,000 Americans and untold hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Solid history marked by memorable moments (including a glimpse of David Halberstam looting Saigon's presidential palace) and the highly effective use of hitherto classified documents."--Kirkus Reviews

"Jones presents a work of outstanding scholarship, on which he spent 15 years researching recently declassified State Department records and a comprehensive array of other primary and secondary documents, to arrive at a persuasively affirmative response....This scholarly appraisal ranks with Fredrik Logevall's Choosing War and David Kaiser's American Tragedy as one of the most important current investigations of the diplomacy of the early war."--Library Journal

"Jones...argues that the instability of Diem's government, followed by the assassinations of Diem and JFK, combined to create an environment where escalation of American involvement in Vietnam became inevitable, thus triggering what Jones terms 'the death of a generation."....Jones goes deeper into the existing evidence supporting this thesis than have most other writers, and does so in a highly readable manner."--Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• pa-perback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195176057
• ISBN-13: 978-0195176056
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches