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For two Americans in Saigon in 1963, the personal and the political combine to spark the drama of a lifetime. Before it spread into a tragic war that defined a generation, the conflict in Vietnam smoldered as a guerrilla insurgency and a diplomatic nightmare. Into this volatile country stepped Frederick "Fritz" Nolting, the US ambassador, and his second-in-command, William "Bill" Trueheart, immortalized in David Halberstam's landmark work The Best and the Brightest and accidental players in a pivotal juncture in modern US history.. Diplomats at War is a personal memoir by former Washington Post reporter Charles Trueheart - Bill's son and Nolting's godson - who grew up amid the events that traumatized two families and an entire nation.