This is the hidden history of American wars. Eugene G. Windchy lays bare the tricks, errors, and secret plans that have taken the American people into avoidable conflicts. Our greatest national catastrophe was the Civil War. It began with Southerners firing on Fort Sumter. Why did they reject an opportunity to take the fort peacefully? We learn who opened fire. And why.

The assassination of Austria's Archduke Ferdinand sparked World War I. Americans tend to think he was killed by a "lone wolf." In fact, along the Archduke's motorcade route at least six trained assassins waited with bombs and revolvers. Windchy reveals what nation was behind that A month later another assassination took place. It silenced a Socialist politician who had vowed to expose the people who planned the war. The first assassination provoked the war, the second hid its authors.

In 1917, the U.S. entered World War I and saved the Allies from defeat on land and sea. Yet in 1936, Winston Churchill said that the world would have been better off if the Americans had stayed home. His reasons are presented.

Concerning the much criticized American entry into the Vietnam War, Windchy gives the inside story, updating the information in his book Tonkin Gulf. He also reports that President Lyndon B. Johnson rejected the Army's recommended war strategy. Could the Army's plan have won the war? Yes, said a defecting North Vietnamese colonel.