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Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy. By Arnold R. Isaacs. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-80185605-1. Bibliographical Essay. List of Sources. Index. Pp. xii, 236. $25.95.
No event in the post-World War II era, many have argued, had such far reaching and tragic effects on American society, politics, and international relations as the Vietnam War. These "far reaching effects" are the subject of Arnold R. Isaacs's comprehensive, insightful, and indeed, compassionate book. This was an epochal event in which the human toll, whether for the American people, the South Vietnamese, the American G.I., or the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers-one is here reminded of the masses in Tolstoy's War and Peace-was almost unimaginable. In addition to the 58,000 American dead, the war cost 1.5 million to 2...