It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle.

Max Hastings--preeminent military historian--takes us back to the bloody bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950. Using personal accounts from interviews with more than two-hundred vets--including the Chinese--Hastings follows real officers and soldiers through the battles. He brilliantly captures the Cold War crisis at home--the strategies and politics of Truman, Acheson, Marshall, MacArthur, Ridgway, and Bradley--and shows what we should have learned in the war that was the prelude to Vietnam.