From the Publisher
"With over 30,000 books published on the Vietnam War, does it make sense to write another book about the conflict waged by the United States in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam between 1957 and 1973? Reading Fire and Rain, the answer is affirmative for several reasons." — Mariano Aguirre , International Affairs
"Eisenberg's account reads as easily as a novel....In detailing Nixon and Kissinger's (often secret) overtures to and negotiations with the Communist superpowers of China and the Soviet Union...Eisenberg stresses that the pair often circumvented their own State Department....This is...a recurring theme: the increasing number of concessions made, in secret, to Communist powers while ostensibly fighting Communism in South Vietnam." — Sarah Cords, The Progressive"A gripping narrative of America's war in Vietnam during its fateful, concluding years, replete with intrigue, manipulation, self-deception, and mindless brutality. Fire and Rain is a vividly written, even harrowing book. Carolyn Eisenberg has produced a masterpiece." — Andrew Bacevich, author of On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century"Even experts on Vietnam will be surprised at the revelations in Carolyn Eisenberg's Fire and Rain. Deploying a wealth of declassified documents, archival finds, and eyewitness accounts, Fire and Rain paints a sweeping, panoramic, and devastating portrait of the war that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger waged, a fatal fraud on America and Southeast Asia." — Ken Hughes, author of Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection"An impressive work of diplomatic history, Carolyn Eisenberg's Fire and Rain convincingly reveals how Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's catastrophic war in Southeast Asia set the course of subsequent US diplomacy with Russia and China. This book should be widely read." — Greg Grandin, Yale University"A formidable achievement. Carolyn Eisenberg's Fire and Rain is a brilliant and deeply shocking biography of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Relying on Kissinger's own telephone transcripts and newly declassified presidential papers, Eisenberg's measured narrative strips away all the lies and myths to document how these deeply flawed men single-handedly prolonged the Vietnam war. It is an all too human tale of deception and incompetence. Kissinger's vaunted reputation will never recover from a book destined to become a classic history of the Vietnam tragedy." — Kai Bird, Leon Levy Center for Biography"Accessibly written and meticulously researched, Fire and Rain is a thought-provoking and important book on the American war in Vietnam." — Daniel R. Hart, VVA Veteran"Eisenberg recounts the last phase of the U.S. war in Vietnam with new details and caustic moral clarity, based on declassified papers and transcripts of taped conversations between President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger... They engineered diplomatic breakthroughs with Beijing and Moscow that produced important results but no substantial help in pressuring Hanoi to negotiate. Nixon ordered the bombing of civilians in North Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia and Laos to force concessions from Hanoi, but the resulting tweaks to the peace deal reached in Paris in 1973 did not change the situation on the ground. It was a fig-leaf agreement that foreseeably led to the fall of the feckless South Vietnamese regime just two years later. Peace was achieved, but not, as the administration claimed, 'with honor.'" — Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs"A meticulous and engaging reconstruction of U.S. decision-making in the final years of the Vietnam War... Eisenberg offers fresh evidence and argumentation that, along with the passion of her prose, make Fire and Rain imperative reading... Particularly damning is Eisenberg's contention that Nixon and Kissinger continued the war not because of worry that defeat would damage the credibility of U.S. power-the key reason they invoked in their memoirs-but because of selfish electoral considerations and overweening confidence in their ability to use violence to achieve their goals... Eisenberg contextualizes U.S. decision-making by relentlessly describing the horrific consequences of U.S. decisions for the ordinary men and women caught up in the war either as belligerents or innocent bystanders." — Mark Atwood Lawrence, Diplomatic History"Carolyn Eisenberg's urgent Fire and Rain ... helps us understand the real stakes of forgetting in our perilous times how and why Americans made war in Vietnam." — Mark Philip Bradley, H-Diplo Roundtable"With impressive fluidity... [Eisenberg] weaves together a fine-grained analysis of Nixon and Kissinger's policymaking processes with a multi-layered perspective of the domestic contexts in which they operated. The result is a book that highlights the significant roles of other US policymakers...and the US peace movement in influencing the course of US involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. This is a history that deftly brings together US foreign policy with domestic policy... Eisenberg's book speaks directly to the present in its scathing and impassioned critique of the militarization of US foreign policymaking that has blinded its practitioners from genuine alternatives to violence." — Elizabeth O'Brien Ingleson, H-Diplo Roundtable