Roots of a Revokution

The author of Elizabeth I’s Secret Lover“places Ireland into a much wider context and takes it beyond the simplistic Catholic v Protestant dichotomy” (The British Empire Blog).

The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular war in which Americans ever fought. And there is no reckoning the cost. The toll in suffering, sorrow, in rancorous national turmoil can never be tabulated. No one wants ever to see America so divided again. And for many of the more than two million American veterans of the war, the wounds of Vietnam will never heal.

Part 1 - Roots of a War (1945-1953)
The end of World War II opened the way for the return of French rule to Indochina. Despite the ties he had forged within the American intelligence community, and his professed respect for democratic ideals, Ho Chi Minh was unable to convince Washington to recognize the legitimacy of his independence movement against the French. French generals and their American advisors expected Ho's rag-tag Viet Minh guerrillas to be defeated easily. But after eight years of fighting and $2.5 billion in U.S. aid, the French lost a crucial battle at Dienbienphu – and with it, their Asian empire.