| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Deadly Bet: LBJ, Vietnam, and the 1968 Election. By Walter LaFeber. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. x, 217 pp. Cloth, $24.95, ISBN 0-7425-4391-9. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-7425-4392-7.)
As Walter LaFeber suggests in his acknowledgments, he has written a book "which might be useful in classroom discussions on the Vietnam War" (p. ix). By implication, it is not a volume in which scholars will find significant new source materials, revelations, or insights. Nonetheless, The Deadly Bet is a nuanced and gracefully written history of American politics in that painful year of 1968. Some scholars might argue with LaFeber's claim that the late 1960s were "the most domestically dangerous, chaotic American era since the Civil War" (p. 179), but I think his assessment is quite plausible.	1
While LaFeber's primary focus is on one year, he gives such thoughtful and ample historical context that students (and others not well schooled in the political history of the Vietnam War) will learn much about the war's roots and evolution prior to 1968. LaFeber shrewdly structures each of the book's chapters around a key individual, including Gen. William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. troops in South Vietnam; senators Robert F. Kennedy of New York and Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968; and Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, who ran as a third-party candidate in the general election. He does so while advancing the narrative most effectively.	. . .

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