Unwilling to Quit

David Prentice splendidly advances an admirable historiographical trend by placing the American war in Vietnam into its proper Vietnamese context. Centering on two key characters—US Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu—Prentice offers a bold new interpretation of how wartime allies approached the impending withdrawal of American troops from a long and brutal conflict. A stimulating, fresh approach to the war's final years.

~Gregory A. Daddis, USS Midway Chair in Modern US Military History, San Diego State University and author of Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men's Adventure Magazines

In Unwilling to Quit, David Prentice has written a brilliant and thoroughly researched history of the Nixon administration's Vietnamization policy, skillfully demonstrating what the president hoped to achieve as "peace with honor," yet revealing the frustrations and failures the policy ultimately entailed. This book is a must-read for Americans trying to understand why the Vietnam War ended as tragically as it did.

~Thomas A. Schwartz, Distinguished Professor of History, Vanderbilt University, and author of Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography

Unwilling to Quit offers fresh and invaluable insights into the Vietnam War's de-Americanization. This is the first study of its kind to advance that the so-called process of Vietnamization underwritten by the Nixon administration to offset the phased withdrawal of U.S. combat forces was not only tolerated but actually embraced by South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu.  In a field so marked by repetition of old, standard arguments, Prentice bravely and convincingly challenges the traditional consensus on a critical aspect of the Cold War's most consequential conflagration.

~Pierre Asselin, author of Vietnam's American War: A History