Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to military historian D. M. Giangreco, who not only read and critiqued the entire manuscript but also offered his irrepressible brand of encouragement from the inception of this project to its completion and, during lengthy phone conversations, provided me with invaluable tutorials on technical military matters. James H. Willbanks, Vietnam War veteran and now one of the leading historians of that conflict, on short notice, read the manuscript and provided extremely helpful comments. Cathal Nolan, my colleague at Boston University and also a military historian, likewise on short notice, provided a valuable critique of the entire manuscript. Robert Wexelblatt, also my colleague at Boston University, read and then reread large sections of the manuscript and offered key suggestions that helped me move forward when I seemed stuck in Chapter 1. William Tilchin, Jay Corrin, and June Grasso, my colleagues in Boston University’s Division of Social Sciences, evaluated or discussed parts of this manuscript with me and were always available for consultations when needed. My thanks to Lewis Bateman, the editor at Cambridge University Press who was willing to take a chance on this project; to the anonymous evaluators enlisted by Cambridge University Press for comments and criticism that guided me in crafting and completing this project; and to Kristina Deusch, copy editor Linda Benson, Saranya Jeeva Nath Singh, Robert Judkins, and the staff at CUP for their hard work in helping bring this project to fruition.
I owe a special thanks to my wonderful daughters, Eleza and Tamara, for their unconditional love and support regardless of my many moods. My wife, Carol, took on the tedious job of proofreading the final version of the manuscript before I sent it to the publisher. More important, as she has done for half a century, she held body and soul together as I struggled to complete a project that turned out to be far more difficult than I had originally anticipated. As always, my deepest gratitude is reserved for her.
