Perdita Huston writes about what she is most interested in - people. A quintessential listener and superb raconteur, she enables her readers to see women, men, children and families as for the first time. We savor her eye for detail about their daily lives, her wonderment at their tenacity to survive under a variety of conditions, their boundless energy to create, derive joy and find humor even in dire circumstances, and soar to admirable heights of compassion and sacrifice. What Perdita has done in is make tangible the universality of the human condition. She writes with a unique faith in the ties that bind us and an inspiring optimism that these ties will indeed move us toward a better world. Her latest book offers a laboratory of cases, issues, and reflections -- ideal for discussion in high school and college classrooms and book clubs.

Perdita Huston's FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001), published by The Feminist Press of the City University of New York, is an astonishing book likely to change government policy and ideas about support for families everywhere. Huston is a feminist former government administrator (Peace Corps Regional Director for North Africa, the Near East, Asia, the Pacific, and Peace Corp chief in both Mali and Bulgaria) whose writing is a pleasure to read.... interesting, compelling, literary, easy to read, and substantial.

She takes her reader on an armchair round the world tour of visits to representative families in Japan, Thailand, Bangladesh, China, Mali, Uganda, Egypt, Jordan, Brazil, El Salvador, and the USA. Her in depth interviews make the important point that families around the world are alive and well, and surviving in new and different, often imaginative ways sometimes controversial, but destined to be accepted in time by people who may now question the need for change and new solutions to problems of family survival. Government action and policy changes are needed to support family survival efforts Huston describes, and she makes a good case for looking at old, classical problems in new ways.

Former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard C. Holbrooke, author of TO END A WAR, offers a touching Foreward to Perdita Huston's book, and states "she is, in her way, still the scribe of Constantinois, writing down the words and thoughts of the voiceless, helping give them shape and, above all, giving them to us." Ambassador Holbrooke clearly admires Perdita Huston, and anyone who reads her wonderful book can quickly understand why.

Huston's book is a curious and wonderful combination of hard, politically shocking facts and quiet, humane reflection and communication about delicate and often undiscussed and unrevealed important needs human beings have around the world, needs not confined to particular regions or countries of the world. Problems Perdita Huston reveals in FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001) are truly universal. They exist worldwide, far away and also in our own back yards. They are not to be run away from. They are to be faced carefully and intelligently.

Perdita Huston is a new kind of feminist. Her communications style is refreshingly diplomatic and careful. It calls for solutions to problems without scapegoats or bromides. Implicitly, Huston invites non-Feminist females and sympathetic males to join Feminists concerned about the very subject of families, their survival, and resources they need. FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001) sets a new standard in Feminist communications and polemics, and is bound to make friends for Feminism and its goals worldwide. Hopefully, other Feminists will notice her new style, and give us more of the same.

Perdita Huston provides us with important information about an important subject not to be ignored or trivialized....the survival of the family as an institution. Her words are bound to bring tears to the eyes of readers, and to make them call for government action and change as it concerns the subject of the family.

All this said, FAMILIES AS WE ARE (2001) is a hopeful and optimistic book, truly memorable and likely to become a classic read and re-read by thoughtful people for decades to come. We owe a lot to Perdita Huston for writing it.

These are the views of seven people, Americans and Vietnamese, who in the early sixties contended that the US should pursue a counterinsurgency approach instead of a full conventional war against the Viet Cong, only to be brushed aside by the Johnson/McNamara group. They suggested that once the "war for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people" was won, the communist threat should disappear.

Although I do not believe counterinsurgency war alone is the only valid approach because of 1) the presence of 200,000 Viet Cong left behind in South Vietnam by Hanoi in 1954, 2) the determination of Hanoi to conquer Saigon, 3) the opening of the Ho Chi Minh trail , this unconvential approach should have been tried first. Had it been combined with a complete interdiction of the trail, victory would have been more likely with less deployment of US troops.

What we have to remember is that the unique, and only goal of Hanoi was to conquer Saigon, no matter the cost in human lives and the time needed to achieve this goal.

To most Americans, the war in Vietnam began in March 1965 with the arrival of the U.S. Marines across the beach at Danang...But a handful of young American civilians had entered the war five years' earlier...Thousands more followed as the entire American Governent was mobilized to "win in Vietnam"..until it became obvious only the South Vietnamese themselves could obtain a victory.. This book offers an insight into the efforts, the successes and the failures of these first Americans; and how we often were our own worst enemy...I had the privilege of serving as one of these men. PRELUDE TO TRAGEDY provides a unique insider look at how dedicated --and desperate--young Americans tried to head off the final outcome...Not a book for casual readers looking for combat stories, but a "must read" for any serious student of the Vietnam conflict.

'Prelude to Tragedy: Vietnam' looks beyond the curtain of lies concocted by Johnson & McNamara in 1964. A simple truth remains too devastating for mainstream publication. Johnson pulled the trigger on the American War in Vietnam by ordering retaliatory strikes three months prior to the election of 1964. No mere coincidence. Johnson did so to win the election. No other factor accounts for Johnson's arrogant insistance on immediate retaliation to an event which never occurred. A 24 hour delay would have revealed there was no Tonkin Gulf attack as claimed. Johnson adamantly demanded an immediate attack for he feared any delay would deny him the use of his trump card as CinC. Air strikes were used to defeat Goldwater. Johnson won the election then defeated himself by his arrogant miss use of military power. Johnson's effort to intimidate Ho Chi Minh failed miserably. Ho recognized retaliatory strikes as the superficial show of force it was. Without a commitment to win Johnson's efforts were doomed to failure from the start. Certain defeat was recognized, long before Johnson stepped aside in '68. 'Prelude' provides evidence of the impending tragedy as it unfolded. However the most damming evidence was left out. The purpose of the air strike was to win the election. Johnson's fear, greed & grasp for power must be recognized if we are to avoid future acts of arrogance leading to war by a renegade president. Our constitution did not grant dictatorial power to a ruthless tyrant. How then, did Johnson acquire sufficient power to over ride congressional restraint & military dissent? He did so by lies, deceit & intimidation for all who stood in his way including his Vice President. Humphrey was denied access to LBJ's inner circle of advisors on Vietnam. JCS members were blocked from attending crucial strategy sessions. Johnson reduced JCS members to pawns, merely carrying out miss guided 'strategies' concocted by McNamara & his 'War Room' of civilian 'experts'. Military officers were intimidated, insulted, humiliated & ignored by Johnson. Military strategies were dictated by Johnson's political agenda. Without a compelling national security threat, military logic or justification for acts of war in Vietnam, Johnson created the ruse of a Tonkin Gulf attack to over ride congressional & military reluctance to war. He then launched unprovoked acts of war to enhance his political image. Johnson's arrogance in resorting to war to win the '64 election is supported by evidence presented in 'Prelude to Tragedy'. The authors failure to state this self evident fact is understandable. Doing so would have invited disbelief, criticism and ostracism. Lies perpetrated by Johnson & McNamara have been assimilated into the very fiber of American perceptions of defeat in Vietnam. The dregs remain today. American foreign policy remains a threat to many, including our allies. Claims of justification for American efforts in Vietnam no longer hold water. 'Prelude to Tragedy' puts an end to McNamara's claim of a well intentioned humanitarian effort. It reveals false claims & deceit by LBJ then and McNamara now in their efforts to distort the reality & rewrite history. American aggression in Vietnam must be revealed & recognized if we are to restore a balance of power. Existing presidential powers enable incumbents to initiate acts of war without the advice or consent of congress. The War Powers Resolution has been ignored by presidents as unconstitutional. This breach of our constitution must first be recognized if it is to be corrected. Americans have yet to grasp this essential lesson from defeat in Vietnam. Failure to curb presidential war powers and restore the balance of power leaves the tragedy without redeeming value. The least we can do is make full use of lessons learned in Vietnam. This nation will not endure without an effective balance between congressional & presidential powers. Will Americans awaken in time to turn the ship of state around before running aground on another distant shore for the sake of political expediency? Or will McNamara & others succeed in efforts to rewrite that tragic chapter? This book contributes to an essential dialog. Recognition of "The Greater Tragedy" may follow. 'Dereliction of Duty' and 'The Wrong War' provide further insight into this American tragedy.

A first-hand account of the endgame in Bosnia, To End A War left me thinking at times that Mr. Holbrooke had succumbed to the same nationalist passions and irrational behavior he went around accusing everyone else of. The book sticks to the facts, but they are not the most interesting part. What is more appealing are the inconsistencies in Holbrooke's personal beliefs, his almost racist approach and arrogance, and the revealing passages about the side in the conflict everyone had thought angelic so far. A disturbing book for a reader from the Balkans, this is nevertheless an excellent resource for examining the creation of the New Diplomacy, with all of its resplendent consequences today. One cannot understand the modern world without it. Read with extreme caution and with scrutiny. And, unlike Holbrooke, try to put your prejudices on hold before opening the covers.

Holbrooke summarizes the events in the former Yugoslavia in a few hundred pages and gives some insight into an important American question: Why did we send troops over there, anyhow? The transformation of a foreign war into a "vital national interest" as defined in the--for example, I know the timelines conflict--1997 US National Military Strategy is one most Americans (myself included) never understood.

There are altruistic reasons to get involved, but that alone may not be enough to commit military forces that are in limited supply, when injustice is seemingly unlimited. There are regional security issues, but the former Yugoslavia was not of regional concern to the US. Rather the reason for our involvement (as described by Holbrooke) was principally that only America had the political and military clout to negotiate a peace settlement. While critics claim this as American ego, Holbrooke says the EU, while an excellent unifier of economic concerns, did not yet command concensus with regards to security issues and could not handle the problem without US involvement. In this book, Holbrooke relived day-by-day the story as it unfolded around him.

Anyhow, long story short...good book. Its value lies in describing a version of the US political mindset for involvement in Yugoslavia. And it explains why we sent troops there. Detractors of the book are that it gets a bit wordy, and that Holbrooke sometimes has trouble reigning in his State-Department-sized ego, a condition common around the beltway. Pretty good book; solid work.

"Reads like a thriller" wrote one student on his course evaluation. This account by Clinton's principal negotiator to end the conflict in the Balkans takes the reader from the landmined mountain roads of Bosnia to the late-night arm-twisting of Milosevic and others at Wright-Patterson AFB. I have used the book in different courses to provide an understanding of the substance of the Balkan conflicts, the role of leadership, and an on-the-ground exposition of diplomacy. Students tend to have two kinds of reactions. First, it reveals (through an admittedly single, American perspective) the issues at stake in the Balkans. But it also offers a more general model for the unseen stakes and battles in diplomacy itself: the variety of interests, the relative (in)flexibility of position on different issues, examples of "spin" to the press, and displays of persistence, skill and the occasional human error (uh, we forgot to consult Croatia!).

Although the roads are better in New York, the book helps one begin to imagine some of the behind-the-scenes battles in the 2002-2003 UN negotiations on military action in Iraq.