Geoffrey C. Ward - The Vietnam War: An Intimate History

Ive been fortunate enough over the past three decades to write about historical subjects ranging back to colonial times. But until beginning this book Id never tried to tackle events that took place during my lifetime. It has been an instructive experience: things I was certain I knew proved to be untrue; everything was more complicated than Id thought it was; shades of gray replaced the stark, black-and-white version of events Id nurtured all these years.

To begin with, Id like to thank Ken Burns yet again for taking on an intimidating topic and allowing me to help frame and tell the story. Its a privilege every time.

Its been a pleasure, as it always is, to work with Lynn Novick, whose determination to get the story right and to do justice to our witnesses spurred everyone who worked on this extraordinary project to greater effort.

Sarah Botstein has been essential from the beginning, performing superbly too many tasks to list here. I am especially grateful for those times when she stopped what she was doing to help keep the author on a more or less even keel.

A quartet of people on the Florentine Films team helped me in a host of different waysMariah Doran, Lucas Frank, Stephen Sowers, and Mike Welt. Im grateful to each and all of them. Id also like to thank interns Chau Hoang and Jonah Velasco, and, in Washington D.C., researcher Polly Pettit.

A professionals professional, Salimah El-Amin amassed the remarkable library of more than twenty-four thousand photographs from which we drew for both the book and the seriesand was always willing to track down still more when needed. Twenty more volumes this size could be produced from the images she and Lucas Frank lovingly gathered.

I owe a special debt to David Schmidt, who found me materials almost as fast as I could think of them, then scoured the manuscript for errors and helped me correct the ones he found. Ive never had that kind of invaluable help before; I hope never to be without it again.

The handsome maps, which were initially created for the series and which make Vietnam seem like a real place in which real things happened, are the creation of Brian Oakes. Megan Ruffe ably oversaw their adaptation from screen to printed page. Erik Villard of the U.S. Army Center of Military History helped check them for accuracy.

Neither this book nor the film series it amplifies could have been completed without Tom Vallely, who has been simultaneously our guru, witness, fixer, contact man, cheerleader, and conscience. Im grateful, too, to two people without whose help we could never have included so many eloquent Vietnamese voicesHo Dang Hoa and Ben Wilkinson.

Two historians proved especially helpful in shaping this volume: Colonel Gregory A. Daddis, who cast a seasoned soldiers eye over this civilians attempt to write military history; and Professor Edward Miller, who read every word of the text and saved me from more bush-league mistakes than I would like to admit. The errors that survive are mine, of course, but Ill always be grateful to both of them for trying to keep me from making them.

Id also like to thank someone I have never met but to whom I am profoundly gratefulMerle Pribbenow, whose translations of important Vietnamese documents and generosity in sharing them again and again helped make the seemingly inexplicable understandable.

This is the tenth book Ive been blessed to publish with Knopf. There is no more skilled or supportive team in the publishing business, and Id like to thank Peter Andersen, Kevin Bourke, Zakiya Harris, Kathy Hourigan, Andy Hughes, Sonny Mehta, and Andrew Miller, and Amy Stackhouse. But I want to pay special tribute to Maggie Hinders, who designed every page, put up with my all-too-frequent changes of mind, and was never satisfied until she got things right. This is the second book weve done together and she tells me shes sorry to have finally finished laying it out. Me, too.

Finally, Id like to again thank my wife, Diane, who makes it possible for me to make it through these projects with such patience, love, and grace.

Geoffrey C. Ward