| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950–1957. By Seth Jacobs. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. x, 381 pp. Cloth, $79.95, ISBN 0-8223-3429-1. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-8223-3440-2.)

Seth Jacobs's America's Miracle Man in Vietnam poses a simple question: why did the United States select such a deeply flawed leader as Ngo Dinh Diem to rule South Vietnam in 1954 and then stand by him for several years despite his obvious unsuitability for the task of creating a robust state? It is a question, Jacobs readily admits, that historians of the Vietnam War have asked previously. But Jacobs promises to do something new. Rather than focusing on the Eisenhower administration's geostrategic calculations, he promises to explain Americans' dedication to Diem as a result of ideological currents that pervaded the United States during the 1950s. The book, like others on the cutting edge of diplomatic history, "historicizes a connection between domestic culture and foreign policy," asserts Jacobs (p. 17).

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