cover image Death in November

Death in November

Ellen J. Hammer. Dutton Books, $22.5 (12pp) ISBN 978-0-525-24210-9

American policy in Vietnam takes a severe and convincing drubbing in this deeply researched book by the author of the renowned Struggle for Indochina. Hammer tells the story of President Ngo Dinh Diem's final 10 months in office, ending with his assassination, and if there was any doubt about American complicity in the sorry affair, that doubt is dispelled here. In one of the book's most shocking passages, the author describes how Henry Cabot Lodge, the newly appointed ambassador, called a meeting to consider ways of organizing a coup d'etat on the very day he arrived in Saigoneven before he had presented his credentials at Gia Long Palace. She charges that President Kennedy, about to meet his fate in Dallas, made plans to inform Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk that the American government would not have him killed. The American officials' simplistic view of the situation in Vietnam in 1963 and their chilling indifference to the fate of Diem (and that of his brother and closest adviser) are exposed here in excoriating detail. (March 30)