The book includes too many castigations of Westmoreland's colleagues, and it shows him to be more narrow than most of us know him to be. Loosely written and poorly edited, this book does no credit to its subject. Westmoreland is a tragic figure in American military history. He deserves great credit for slowing the sweep of communism in Vietnam, gaining time for the other free nations of Southeast Asia to build their defenses. That is his major contribution.
Autobiographies abound on service in Vietnam.
Many reveal acts of heroism, some defying the logic of that battlefield. I Was the Last Postal Clerk in Saigon . He watched from afar as the United States turned the war over to a Vietnamese army disinclined to fight. Returning to a communist Vietnam in 1991, he saw it reemerging into world trade and association. It is appropriate to mention also the genre of biographies of women who served in Vietnam.