Informative and at times exhilarating; recommended for academic collections.

Library Journal

John F. Kennedy's unrealized Vietnam strategy gets a comprehensive workout in this volume. . . . The book offers other new insights (PBS broadcaster and former LBJ advisor Bill Moyers, a possible Kennedy-McNamara 'back-channel').

Publishers Weekly

The authors . . . make a fair case that . . . 'virtual history' is a much more serious exercise than counterfactual history. . . . The liveliness of the exchanges and the enthusiasm of the participants do illuminate this critical period in U.S. history.

Foreign Affairs

On the two most treacherous issues Kennedy left unresolved, the jury will always be out. Mindful of the southern segregationists in his own party, he moved timidly in advancing civil rights for African-Americans. We'll never know whether his powerful Oval Office addresses, promoted by the National Guard-enforced admission of black students into the University of Alabama in June 1963, was the harbinger of a greater commitment to civil rights activism or not. Nor, of course, will we ever know whether Kennedy would have followed Johnson's disastrous course in Vietnam. The closest we have to an answer can be found in Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived.

New York Review of Books

A fascinating and important book that uses innovative research to explain how America got into the Vietnam quagmire. It is deeply relevant to today's debates about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the danger of war with Iran with timely lessons on presidential leadership.

Bruce Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, and author of Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad

As an exercise in virtual history, this book is impeccable. The authors have brought together the relevant policy makers, scholars, and newly released documents to examine the major question of the Vietnam War. Their conclusion-that Kennedy would not have Americanized the war-is reasonable and significant, as is their methodology. This is must reading for any student of American foreign relations.

Robert K. Brigham, Vassar College; author of Guerrilla Diplomacy