Bureaucracy At War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict

This book deserves more attention than it is likely to receive. American performance in Vietnam is not a popular subject. But here it is analyzed cogently and pungently. The author, known at the time as "Blowtorch," designed and directed the pacification program, which dealt with the "people's war." This is not a book about policy or morality. But Komer's insights about institutional constraints and weaknesses in the management of war has relevance far beyond Vietnam.