When: Thursday, September 25, 2025

Time: 7:00 PM EST

Where: In-person in our Archives and Research building or online via ZOOM.

Join author and journalist Charles Trueheart as he discusses his book Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam War.

Diplomats at War by Charles Trueheart blends personal memoir with Cold War history, recounting a pivotal 1963 moment when President Kennedy chose to break ties with South Vietnam’s faltering Diem regime. That decision, made amid political turmoil and rising violence, led to Diem’s assassination, just weeks before Kennedy's own.

Through the eyes of a young boy in Saigon, the author revisits the unraveling of both a U.S. foreign alliance and the personal friendship between Ambassador Frederick Nolting and Deputy Chief of Mission William Trueheart, his father. The book explores how a crisis in statecraft also shattered human relationships, offering an intimate lens on a turning point in American involvement in Vietnam.

Registration Coming Soon!