Even after two decades, the memory of the Vietnam War seems to haunt American culture. From Forrest Gump to Miss Saigon, from Tim O'Brien's Pulitzer Prize-winning Going After Cacciato to Robert McNamara's controversial memoir In Retrospect, Americans are drawn again and again to ponder their long, tragic involvement in Southeast Asia. Now eminent historian Robert D. Schulzinger has combed the newly available documentary evidence, both in public and private archives, to produce an ambitious, masterful account of three decades of war in Vietnam. Ranging from the first rumblings against the French to the American intervention and ultimate withdrawal, Schulzinger paints a brilliant political, diplomatic, and social portrait of this tragic, diverse conflict. In a field crowded with fiction, memoirs, and popular tracts, it will stand as the landmark history of America's longest war.