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Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. By Edwin E. Moise. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. rx, 304 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8078-2300-7.)
In this much-anticipated work, the product of more than ten years of research, Edwin E. Moise subjects to close examination a controversial episode in a controversial war: the incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin in the first week of August 1964, which resulted in the first direct clash between United States and North Vietnamese forces and the passage of a congressional resolution granting Lyndon B. Johnson "all necessary measures to repel attacks . . . and prevent further aggression." What actually happened off the North Vietnamese coast on August 2 and 4, and why? Moise determined he would find out. The result is a first-class piece of scholarship that should go a long way toward settling the dispute that has long raged...