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Fire and Rain

Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia

Carolyn Woods Eisenberg

$77.95

Hardback

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English
Oxford University Press Inc
26 April 2023
"This gripping account interweaves Nixon and Kissinger's pursuit of the war in Southeast Asia and their diplomacy with the Soviet Union and China with on-the-ground military events and US domestic reactions to the war conducted in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Fire and Rain is a compelling, meticulous narrative of the way national security decisions formed at the highest levels of government affect the lives of individuals at home and abroad. By drawing these connections, Carolyn Woods Eisenberg brings to life policy decisions about Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, conveying their significance to a new generation of readers. She breaks fresh ground in contextualizing Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's decisions within a wider institutional and societal framework. While recognizing the distinctive personalities and ideas of these two men, this study more broadly conveys the competing roles and impact of the professional military, the Congress, and a mobilized peace movement.

Drawing upon a vast collection of declassified documents, Eisenberg presents an important re-interpretation of the Nixon Administration's relations with the Soviet Union and China vis a vis the war in Southeast Asia. She argues that in their desperate effort to overcome, or at least overshadow, their failure in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger made major concessions to both nations in the field of arms control, their response to the India-Pakistan war, and the diplomacy surrounding Taiwan--much of this secret. Despite policymakers' claims that the Vietnam War was a ""national security"" necessity that would demonstrate American strength to the communist superpowers and ""credibility"" to friendly governments, the historical record suggests a different reality.

A half-century after the Paris Peace Conference marking the withdrawal of US troops and advisors from Vietnam and foreign troops from Laos and Cambodia, Fire and Rain is a dramatic account of geopolitical decision making, civil society, and the human toll of the war on the people of Southeast Asia."

By:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 168mm,  Width: 235mm,  Spine: 50mm
Weight:   1g
ISBN:   9780197639061
ISBN 10:   0197639062
Pages:   624
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Carolyn Woods Eisenberg is a Professor of US History and American Foreign Relations at Hofstra University. She is the author of Drawing the Line: the American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-49, winner of the Stuart Bernath Book Prize of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Herbert Hoover Book Prize and a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Book Prize. She has written op-eds and done media appearances for numerous outlets, including the New York Times, National Public Radio, Fox, and C-SPAN. She has been a consultant to several members of Congress and is legislative coordinator for Historians for Peace and Democracy.

Reviews for Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia

With over 30,000 books published on the Vietnam War, does it make sense to write another book about the conflict waged by the United States in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam between 1957 and 1973? Reading Fire and Rain, the answer is affirmative for several reasons. * Mariano Aguirre , International Affairs * Eisenberg's account reads as easily as a novel....In detailing Nixon and Kissinger's (often secret) overtures to and negotiations with the Communist superpowers of China and the Soviet Union...Eisenberg stresses that the pair often circumvented their own State Department....This is...a recurring theme: the increasing number of concessions made, in secret, to Communist powers while ostensibly fighting Communism in South Vietnam. * Sarah Cords, The Progressive * A gripping narrative of America's war in Vietnam during its fateful, concluding years, replete with intrigue, manipulation, self-deception, and mindless brutality. Fire and Rain is a vividly written, even harrowing book. Carolyn Eisenberg has produced a masterpiece. * Andrew Bacevich, author of On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century * Even experts on Vietnam will be surprised at the revelations in Carolyn Eisenberg's Fire and Rain. Deploying a wealth of declassified documents, archival finds, and eyewitness accounts, Fire and Rain paints a sweeping, panoramic, and devastating portrait of the war that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger waged, a fatal fraud on America and Southeast Asia. * Ken Hughes, author of Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection * An impressive work of diplomatic history, Carolyn Eisenberg's Fire and Rain convincingly reveals how Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's catastrophic war in Southeast Asia set the course of subsequent US diplomacy with Russia and China. This book should be widely read. * Greg Grandin, Yale University * A formidable achievement. Carolyn Eisenberg's Fire and Rain is a brilliant and deeply shocking biography of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Relying on Kissinger's own telephone transcripts and newly declassified presidential papers, Eisenberg's measured narrative strips away all the lies and myths to document how these deeply flawed men single-handedly prolonged the Vietnam war. It is an all too human tale of deception and incompetence. Kissinger's vaunted reputation will never recover from a book destined to become a classic history of the Vietnam tragedy. * Kai Bird, Leon Levy Center for Biography * Accessibly written and meticulously researched, Fire and Rain is a thought-provoking and important book on the American war in Vietnam. * Daniel R. Hart, VVA Veteran *


  • Winner of Winner, Bancroft Prize.

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