The Virtual JFK DVD is now available! For more information on the film companion to the book, visit http://www.virtualjfk.com/ It Matters Who Is President—Then and Now At the heart of this provocative book lies the fundamental question: Does it matter who is president on issues of war and peace? The Vietnam War was one of the most catastrophic and bloody in living memory, and its lessons take on resonance in light of America's current devastating involvement in Iraq. Tackling head-on the most controversial and debated "what if" in U.S. foreign policy, this unique work explores what President John F. Kennedy would have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated in 1963. Drawing on a wealth of recently declassified documents, frank oral testimony of White House officials from both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and the analysis of top historians, this book presents compelling evidence that JFK was ready to end U.S. involvement well before the conflict escalated. With vivid immediacy, readers will feel they are in the president's war room as the debates raged that forever changed the course of American history—and continue to affect us profoundly today as the shadows of Vietnam stretch into Iraq.

"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." - The New York Review Of Books