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Pulitzer Prize--winning author Ted Morgan has now written a rich and definitive account of the fateful battle that ended French rule in Indochina--and led inexorably to America's Vietnam War. Dien Bien Phu was a remote valley on the border of Laos along a simple rural trade route. But it would also be where a great European power fell to an underestimated insurgent army and lost control of a crucial colony. Valley of Death is the untold story of the 1954 battle that, in six weeks, changed the course of history.A veteran of the French Army, Ted Morgan has made use of exclusive firsthand reports to create the most complete and dramatic telling of the conflict ever written. Here is the history of the Vietminh liberation movement's rebellion against French occupation after World War II and its growth as an adversary, eventually backed by Communist China. Here too is the ill-fated French plan to build a base in Dien Bien Phu and draw the Vietminh into a debilitating defeat--which instead led to the Europeans being encircled in the surrounding hills, besieged by heavy artillery, overrun, and defeated. Making expert use of recently unearthed or released information, Morgan reveals the inner workings of the American effort to aid France, with Eisenhower secretly disdainful of the French effort and prophetically worried that "no military victory was possible in that type of theater." Morgan paints indelible portraits of all the major players, from Henri Navarre, head of the French Union forces, a rigid professional unprepared for an enemy fortified by rice carried on bicycles, to his commander, General Christian de Castries, a privileged, miscast cavalry officer, and General Vo Nguyen Giap, a master of guerrilla warfare working out of a one-room hut on the side of a hill. Most devastatingly, Morgan sets the stage for the Vietnam quagmire that was to come. Superbly researched and powerfully written, Valley of Death is the crowning achievement of an author whose work has always been as compulsively readable as it is important.From the Hardcover edition.
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Subjects
Indochinese War, 1946-1954, Dien Bien Phu, Battle of, Điện Biên Phủ, Vietnam, 1954, Causes, Foreign relations, Dien bien phu, battle of, dien bien phu, vietnam, 1954, Indochinese war, 1946-1954, United states, foreign relations, 1945-1961, United states, foreign relations, vietnam, Vietnam, foreign relations, united states, History, NonfictionPlaces
United States, VietnamTimes
1945-1953Showing 5 featured editions. View all 5 editions?
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1
Valley of Death
2010, Random House Publishing Group
Electronic resource
in English
1588369803 9781588369802
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2
Valley of death: the tragedy at Dien Bien Phu that led America into the Vietnam War
2010, Random House
in English
- 1st ed.
1400066646 9781400066643
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3
Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War
2010, Penguin Random House
in English
1299128874 9781299128873
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4
Valley of death: the tragedy at Dien Bien Phu that led America into the Vietnam War
2010, Random House
in English
- 1st ed.
1400066646 9781400066643
|
aaaa
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WorldCat
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5
Dien Bien Phu: a tragedy in five acts
2010, Random House
in English
- 1st ed.
1400066646 9781400066643
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Book Details
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. [645]-692) and index.
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Feedback?December 15, 2023 | Edited by Tom Morris | Merge works |
December 15, 2023 | Edited by Tom Morris | Merge works |
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November 30, 2010 | Created by ImportBot | initial import |