Vietnam was the longest war in American history. US ground troops and their Australian, New Zealand and Korean allies were committed there for eight long years. In all, the American commitment in Southeast Asia lasted 15 years. During that time over 46,000 US servicemen died in battle. The Australian and New Zealand troops who fought there lost 496 dead and 2,398 wounded. But these figures pale beside Vietnamese losses, which totalled over a million.

Vietnam was the first war America lost. It left the country bitterly divided. Many of the 2.7 million Americans who served there suffered psychologically for decades to come and the USA discovered that, for all its might and technological superiority, it could not defeat the ill-equipped peasant army of a small and fiercely determined enemy.

In this concise account, historian Nigel Cawthorne traces the conflict from its inception to its traumatic end. He looks at the political events that led to the war and examines its impact upon both the Americans and the Vietnamese, whose battle for the independence of their country was to leave lingering scars upon the American psyche. Vietnam: A War Lost and Won is an even-handed assessment of a conflict whose wounds would take a generation to heal.