The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam, January 25, 1963-February 15, 1964 [Paperback]

Francis X. Winters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

When the United States government engineered the overthrow of the troublesome South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963, it set in motion a tumultuous course of events deepening the Vietnam War. The Year of the Hare asks why President John F. Kennedy decided to depose his ally of nine years, despite almost daily warnings from some cabinet officials that the most likely consequence of a coup would be chaos.

Why did Kennedy and his colleagues choose this perilous course in the midst of an uncertain civil war? To answer this question, The Year of the Hare takes us inside the Kennedy administration, where the State Department largely supported the coup while the Pentagon and the CIA consistently resisted it. Francis X. Winters’s research is based on in-depth interviews with high-ranking members of the Kennedy administration, including Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and George Ball, along with the newly issued multivolume compilation Foreign Relations and the United States, 1961-1964, Vietnam and the recently opened General Records of the U.S. State Department for 1963.

The reasons for American support of the coup in Vietnam, Winters asserts, lie both in the ethos of the era, with its dynamic confidence in the superiority of American ideals, and in Kennedy’s political aspirations. The Year of the Hare explores the synergy between the idealism and personal ambition that were at the root of the war that haunts us still.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Winters (ethics and international affairs, Georgetown Univ.) explores the Kennedy administration's 1963 deliberations leading to the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Opposed schools of thought eventually converged to produce a consensus supporting a coup. Kennedy ultimately consented to the coup plus assassination. Diem's downfall, contends Winters, was the beginning of the end for the United States in Vietnam, since a staunch nationalist like Diem would surely have rejected subsequent Americanization of the war effort. Based on in-depth interviews with leading members of the Kennedy administration and recently opened State Department records, this work illuminates the uneasy blend of idealism and hardheaded realism underpinning U.S. political culture. An insightful look at the process of crafting foreign policy in a democracy; recommended for academic libraries.?James Holmes, Fletcher Sch. of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts Univ., Medford, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"This work illuminates the uneasy blend of idealism and hardheaded realism underpinning U.S. political culture. An insightful look at the process of crafting foreign policy in a democracy."--Library Journal

"A substantial contribution to our understanding of this tragic period."--Washington Times

"A definite contribution to the field and an enlightening piece of research in understanding the American presidency, specifically that of John F. Kennedy . . . Winters's detailed analysis of the Year of the Hare provides both the scholar and general reader interested in the topic an intricate examination and understanding of this important point in the Vietnam War. He provides a clear chronology to follow and shows great insight through careful research and analysis of the topic. This is a definite must-read book for those interested in the Vietnam War.”--Presidential Studies Quarterly

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820321214
• ISBN-13: 978-0820321219
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,335,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, if repetitive, July 28, 2004

By 

Max J Rosenthal (DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam, January 25, 1963-February 15, 1964 (Paperback)

Fr. Winters is a former professor of mine and a large part of his course was devoted to this book (which I read in its entireity later on). So maybe it's just a bit of burnout from hearing the same message over and over again, but I found Year of the Hare to be tedious at times but well worth reading. I wasn't terribly impressed with the writing style, which can get a little overblown, or the opening part of the book that goes through the timeline of events leading up to Diem's overthow. But it definitely picks up steam in the second part where each of the major characters is analyzed and Winters essentially assigns blame to the various actors. This part, I thought, was fascinating both in its conclusions and the information that it presents about how each person/group viewed the situation in the framework of their world views. Unfortunately, Fr. Winters is prone to moralizing and the same kind of viewpoint rigidity that he criticizes in the book, so it lapses back into repetition in the conclusion, which is pretty preachy. But on the whole, it was an enjoyable and quick read, and I think its main point, that Vietnam was Kennedy's unfortunate and avoidable reaction to the horrors of nuclear war in Europe, is convincing and novel enough to be given a look. Any of the more negative parts of the book are well-balanced by its short length and the really interesting middle section.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A monumental work from an American scholar, July 12, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam January 25, 1963-February 15, 1964 (Hardcover)

Francis X. Winters has written what the Vietnamese both in Viet Nam and the overseas have been saying for decades. The only differences between the Vietnamese version versus Winters' is that he had unearth rare documents and conducted fascinating interviews to support his claim. There are many books about Viet Nam; however, "The Year of the Hare" stands alone from 1963-1964.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not particularly insighful, September 23, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam January 25, 1963-February 15, 1964 (Hardcover)

This book did not set off any light bulb in my mind. Those readers who have read other accounts of the 1963 coup in Vietnam (e.g., by Bernard Fall, or the Pentagon Papers) will not gain any new insight from this one. About the cleverest part of the book is its title. Unfortunately, even that effort failed: The author did not realize that, for a year that the Chinese consider the year of the hare, the Vietnamese call it the year of the cat.