Salisbury was an excellent journalist and his objective reporting gives us a peek behind the bamboo curtain of the late 60s. Before his articles and later book, only communist propagandists had written about the bombing of North Vietnam. This is not his best book. It's basically just a series of articles he wrote for the New York Times strung together in book form. It's primary interest is as an historical artifact. Before Salisbury traveled there no civilian Americans had reported on Hanoi since the founding North Vietnam. His best books are on Russia and I would not recommend this unless one has a deep interest in the Vietnam war. ( )