Overview

Details how the US State Department attempted, and failed, to save South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression and the powerful domestic political influences that ultimately led to America's defeat. Ten years after the end of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, a career Foreign Service officer, Thomas J. Corcoran, set down in writing his thoughts on the history of US State Department policy during America's involvement with South Vietnam. Like many Americans of his generation, he was perplexed by the failure of America to achieve its goals in South Vietnam. As an ambassador and with over thirty years of diplomatic experience--beginning in 1948 when he was assigned to Hanoi and involving other postings in Southeast Asia--he brought to his analysis a long and rich personal experience with events in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The result is a thoughtful, objective, and well-researched study that chronicles the key policy decisions made by the US State Department throughout the entire period from 1945 to 1975; decisions that ultimately led to the first war lost by the United States. In his extensive study, Corcoran does an excellent job of exposing many of the myths and falsehoods found in orthodox histories of US involvement in Vietnam.

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Ambassador Thomas J. Corcoran began his foreign service career in 1948. His first assignments abroad were in Spain and then, in 1950 in Hanoi and Hue in Vietnam, which was then under French control. He became the Charge d'Affaires in Vientiane, Laos, and then Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1952. He went back to Hanoi from the beginning of September 1954 until about December 12, 1955. He was there about fourteen months. He later served in Upper Volta, Haiti, and in Quebec, Canada, and again in Vietnam for several years. He was Charge d'Affaires ad interim (Laos) from August 1975 to March 1978 and he was ambassador to Burundi from 1978 until retiring from the State Department in 1980. Joel Richards was the kid who did crazy things just to have a good story to tell afterward. On deciding to make his affection his profession, he received a BFA in acting and a BA in English from the University of Utah, and later an MA in oral storytelling from East Tennessee State University. He has narrated over 150 audiobooks (fiction and nonfiction) and continues to tell his original stories to live audiences.

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