[Miller] mines new Vietnamese and French sources to advance important arguments. Miller offers numerous new details of Diem’s early career to present him as a serious modernizer seeking to retain traditional principles. He illuminates Diem’s close personal friendship with the iconic Vietnamese anticolonialist Phan Boi Chau, with whom he spent long hours discussing the relevance of Confucianism—its moral and philosophical precepts—to modern politics and society.

- Mark Moyar, Wall Street Journal

[Miller’s] book skillfully places the establishment of the new nation in the great debate after World War II between the high modernist (Walt Rostow et al.) and low modernist (<i>The Ugly American</i>) development schools. Miller’s command of the various parties and factions that jostled for power at the collapse of, first, Japanese occupation and then French rule is exhaustive, and his analysis of the economic development programs—land reform, the Agrovilles, the Strategic Hamlet program—is fascinating in its own right.

- Charles Trueheart, Weekly Standard

An extraordinary book, brilliantly conceived and cogently argued. Miller transcends the scholarly and political polemics of Vietnam War literature, presenting readers with a fresh and original take on Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnam’s relationship with the U.S. <i>Misalliance</i> is sure to be greeted with widespread acclaim.

- Andrew Preston, author of <i>The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam</i>,