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"Keith Saliba has done a truly magnificent job of explaining the decisive year in the Vietnam War. His research is extensive and his analysis is cogent and first rate in every respect. An easy to read and richly resourced volume... highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Vietnam War and US foreign policy during that war."

~ Col. Andrew Finlayson, USMC (Ret.)

"Truly magnificent" - USMC Col. Andrew R. Finlayson (Ret.), author of Killer Kane: A Marine Long-Range Recon Leader in Vietnam, 1967-1968 and Rice Paddy Recon: A Marine Officer's Second Tour in Vietnam, 1968-1970

J. Keith Saliba, award-winning author of Death in the Highlands: The Siege of Special Forces Camp Plei Me, returns to the fiery crucible of America’s final harrowing year in Vietnam.

1972…the Year of the Rat.

America is on its way out. Troop strength plummets to its lowest ebb since early 1965. President Richard Nixon's Vietnamization program to train and equip the South to stand alone continues apace. All that remains is to secure his "honorable peace.”

But the president’s overtures fall on deaf ears. Convinced military victory is at last within reach, North Vietnam's ruling politburo instead launches a massive, three-pronged invasion of the South. As tanks roll and artillery thunders, the plan is brutally simple: crush South Vietnam's military, depose its "puppet" regime, and drive the Americans into ignominious retreat.

Yet communist leaders severely underestimate their adversary in Washington. Despite overwhelming public and Congressional pressure to call it quits in Vietnam, Nixon instead vows to destroy Hanoi's very ability to wage war. What follows is the most devastating air and naval campaign of the conflict, drowning the North’s military, industrial, and economic infrastructure in a deluge of fire and steel.

Can Hanoi's massive invasion be rolled back before South Vietnam collapses? And what of Nixon's "honorable peace"? After sacrificing so much blood and treasure, would America's nearly two-decade effort to realize a stable and non-communist South Vietnamese republic finally come to pass? The answers would decide the fate of the Indochinese people for decades to come.

Drawing on archival research, interviews with combat veterans, and perspectives from all sides, Saliba takes you into the heat of the last desperate fight for peace in Vietnam.