Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict

Former Washington Post foreign correspondent Trueheart (Kyrie) blends solid history and revealing first-person storytelling in this riveting account of the early years of the Vietnam War. Starting when he was ten years old in 1961, Trueheart lived with his family in Saigon where his father, William “Bill” Trueheart, served as the second-in-command at the U.S. embassy under his close friend (and his son’s godfather), Ambassador Frederick “Fritz” Nolting. Culminating with the violent military coup that overthrew South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963, Trueheart’s narrative primarily utilizes State Department documents, oral histories, and interviews to chronicle the events that led to Diem’s downfall. Along the way, Trueheart weaves in his family’s story, centering on his father and Nolting’s disagreement about backing the autocratic Diem, which led to “the break of a lifetime” following the coup, which the elder Trueheart supported. The two men never spoke to each other again, the elder Trueheart’s Foreign Service career suffered, and Nolting remained bitter about it to his dying day. Filled with telling family stories and revealing portraits of all the players involved, this is an important and unique contribution to the early history of the American war in Vietnam. (Mar.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misspelled the author’s surname and misstated his age in 1961.