A Better War

Lewis Sorley, an award-winning military historian, turns his attention to the years 1968 to 1975 of the Vietnam War, a period that scholars and journalists have largely passed over. These years hold surprises about both how the fighting was carried out and what the American effort actually accomplished.

The book draws on thousands of hours of tape-recorded meetings among the highest levels of the American military command in Vietnam. These recordings were not previously accessible and remain classified. Through this access to authoritative material, Sorley documents how the war's conception, conduct, and, for a time, its results differed between its early and later years.

His central argument is that while the war was being lost at the negotiating table and in the US Congress, American soldiers were winning on the ground. The work sheds new light on the Vietnam War.