Derives from an unprecedented seminar held at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in November 1990. At the seminar, leading Western diplomatic and military historians and Vietnam scholars met with prominent Vietnamese Communists to reflect on the Vietnam War.

Part 1 The Vietnamese Revolution and Political/Military Strategy; Chapter 1 An Improbable Opportunity: America and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's 1947 Initiative, Mark Bradley; Chapter 2 Waging Revolutionary War: The Evolution of Hanoi's Strategy in the South, 1959-1965, William Duiker; Chapter 3 Tet: The 1968 General Offensive and General Uprising, Tran Van TraGeneral; Chapter 4 Hanoi's Strategy in the Second Indochina War, David W.P. Elliott; Chapter 5 Love, War, and Revolution: Reflections on the Memoirs of Nguyen Thi Dinh, Kristin Pelzer; Part 2 The War from American Side; Chapter 6 U.S. Military Strategy and the Vietnam War, George R.Vickers; Chapter 7 History's Heaviest Bombing, James P. Harrison; Chapter 8 The Strange "Dissent" of Robert S. McNamara, George C. Herring; Chapter 9 "How Do You Know if You're Winning?": Perception and Reality in America's Military Performance in Vietnam, 1965-1970, Ronald H. Spector; Chapter 10 Direct and Indirect Effects of the Movement against the Vietnam War, Paul Joseph; Part 3 The War in the South and Cambodia; Chapter 11 Civil-Military Relations in South Vietnam and the American Advisory Effort, Jeffrey Clarke; Chapter 12 The Seven-Point Proposal of the PRG (July 1, 1971) and the U.S. Reaction, Luu Doan Huynh; Chapter 13 Post-Paris Agreement Struggles and the Fall of Saigon, Ngo Vinh Long; Chapter 14 The Impact on Cambodia of the U.S. Intervention in Vietnam, Ben Kiernan; Part 4 Retrospective and Postwar Issues; Chapter 15 The War That Should Not Have Been, Tran Van TraGeneral; Chapter 16 The American War in Vietnamese Memory, Luu Doan Huynh; Chapter 17 The Vietnam War in American Memory, Marilyn B. Young; Chapter 18 The Antiwar Movement after the War, David Hunt; Chapter 19 China and Vietnam: Looking for a New Version of an Old Relationship, Keith W. Taylor;