Event co-sponsored by the UCSB Department of History

Join CCWS on Wednesday, April 10th for a fascinating talk by Professor Fredrik Logevall discussing his highly acclaimed new book, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. Drawing on newly available documents from several nations, and making full use of the vast published literature, Professor Logevall surveys the broad sweep of the Vietnam War. He begins with the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, where a young Ho Chi Minh attempted to petition President Woodrow Wilson for Vietnamese independence, and ends with a 1959 Viet Cong ambush, resulting in the first U.S. combat deaths of the war. Throughout the talk, Professor Logevall helps us unravel the mystery of how two great powers, France and the United States, could have been drawn into such disastrous ventures. 

Prof. Logevall is John S. Knight Professor of International Studies in the Department of History at Cornell University. He is the author of numerous books on the Vietnam War and international relations, including Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (1999), The Origins of the Vietnam War (2001), Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, and, with Campbell Craig, America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (2009).