As the the first president of South Vietnam (1955-1963), Ngo Dinh Diem commanded an authoritarian regime characterized by corruption, nepotism, and political repression. Vietnam had temporarily been partitioned in 1954 pending free elections, but with support of Western nations, Diem refused to permit elections because (as a national hero) the communist Ho Chi Minh would likely emerge the victor. From the outset of his regime, Diem was faced with political opposition, including from groups with communist, socialist, and nationalist agendas. Diem consolidated his power through fraudulent elections, nepotism, and repression of the press, and by imprisonment, torture, and assassination of political opponents. In addition, as a Roman Catholic, he enacted policies regarded as oppressive and unpopular by the Buddhist majority population. Diem held onto power through support from the United States, but was unwilling to enact political reforms and proved increasingly resistant to US influence. He and his brother were deposed and murdered in a military coup backed by the US under the presidental administration of John F. Kennedy. All of this is a matter of public record (see sources below).

Anthony Bouscaren's The Last of the Mandarins: Diem of Vietnam was published in 1965, less than two years after the military coup that ended Diem's rule and life. Although nominally a biography, it presents a highly - partisan defense of Diem and an attack on those who found fault with his dictatorial regime. As a US academic, Bouscaren was a "Cold War hawk" who adopted a strongly anti-communist stance in his political writings. In The Last of the Mandarins he presents an extreme and simplistic view tempered by none of the complexities or concerns evident in contemporary work of other scholars and of journalists. Thus while others (including US State Dept officials) saw Diem's "land reform" efforts and the "strategic hamlet" program as failures, Bouscaren cites the official statistics of Diem's government to argue for their success. His book ignores the fraudulent elections and the widespread political repression and corruption of Diem's regime (all of which were of international concern), attributing opposition to Diem solely to "communist infiltration." The book also denies the religious oppression, attributing the activism to "Buddhist troublemakers" who were duped by "communists." In the US during the early 1960s, much of this reflected the standard right - wing interpretation. However, Bouscaren takes things to an extreme, in charging that the self - immolations of Buddhist monks (done in protest of Diem's policies) were actually done by individuals who were drugged and set afire by others. Indeed, he goes so far as to deny that the religion of the majority in South Vietnam was Buddhism.

Bouscaren's book scrutinizes events surrounding the military coup that overthrew Diem's regime. Here he has done some homework, and cites evidence for US financial and moral support for the coup plotters, and lack of effort by US Ambassador Lodge to protect Diem and his family. For the most part, however, Bouscaren's book is weakly - researched and poorly documented. He mentions Bernard Fall's classic The Two Viet-Nams, but deals with none of the wealth of information in that work that runs counter to his thesis. Likewise, other oppositional views are either ignored or (in the case of US news reports from such correspondents as David Halberstam) are dismissed out of hand. For a supposedly scholarly work (it was published by Duquesne University Press), the book has surprisingly few footnotes and references. The author chiefly cites sources that support his political opinions, and never comes to grips with alternative evidence and perspectives.

In sum, Bouscaren's The Last of the Mandarins: Diem of Vietnam presents a highly - partisan view of Ngo Dinh Diem and the conflict in Vietnam, as a work with a clear political agenda. Even for its day it was an unreliable source of information, and there now are many much better sources available for readers interested in these subjects.

For more reliable and scholarly accounts of Diem's life and regime see the following books:

http://www.librarything.com/work/4700783/descriptions
http://www.librarything.com/work/1622448/reviews
http://www.librarything.com/work/1206865/descriptions

For a general account of the coup and assassination see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem#Coup_and_assassination
US complicity is documented in detail here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm ( )