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Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950-1963. By Seth Jacobs. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. xii, 207 pp. Cloth, $65.00, isbn 978-0-7425-4447-5. Paper, $19.95, isbn 978-0-7425-4448-2.)
Ngo Dinh Diem became prime minister of the State of Vietnam in 1954, near the end of the first Indochina War. It was largely a French puppet government. By the time his title changed to President of the Republic of Vietnam in 1955, he had broken his government free of French domination and had become the linchpin for American policy in Vietnam. He remained so until 1963, when the United States connived at the military coup that overthrew and killed him. Seth Jacobs's Cold War Mandarin says much that is interesting about Diem's relations with the Americans but less about his...