For two Americans in Saigon in 1963, the personal and the political combined to spark the drama of a lifetime. Frederick "Fritz" Nolting, the U.S. ambassador, and his second-in-command, William "Bill" Trueheart, were immortalized in David Halberstam's landmark 1972 work, The Best and the Brightest, as accidental players in a pivotal juncture in modern U.S. history. A new book in the Miller Center Studies on the Presidency series with UVA Press, Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict, is a personal memoir by former Washington Post reporter Charles Trueheart—Bill’s son and Nolting's godson—who grew up amid the events that traumatized two families and an entire nation.
Marc Selverstone