Osprey is a publishing house in the United Kingdom that should be familiar to most modelers, historians, and military history buffs. Osprey continues to expand their product line and one of their newest series is combat. The books examine the relative strengths and weaknesses of two adversaries across the historical timeline, from ancient empires to modern conflicts. This particular volume turns its attention to the Vietnam War. Rather than examine the entire conflict, this volume examines the critical years of 1967-68, through the eyes of the United States Marines and the North Vietnamese Army.

As with all Osprey series, regardless of the topic, they follow a particular format. For the combat series, the chapters are organized as follows:

• Introduction
• The Opposing Sides
• The Hill Fights, April 23-30, 1967
• Operation KINGFISHER, July 28-29, 1967
• Hue, New City, January 31-February 7, 1967
• Analysis
• Aftermath
• Unit Organizations
• Bibliography
• Index

The book is illustrated with contemporary photographs in black and white and color, several striking paintings commissioned just for this volume, and maps of the individual actions that are listed above.

As the table of contents indicates, the combat series looks at the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two adversaries featured, in this case the Marines and NVA. The author looks at doctrine, recruitment, leadership, and weapons in telling this familiar story. Avoiding a dogmatic approach concerning the American strategy, the author does a fair job of looking at the relative performance of the Marines and NVA. For me, the most interesting example was the slog match of liberating Hue in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. While the text is dry in tone, the case studies chosen by the author were very good in demonstrating how successful the NVA was against an equally well trained and determined adversary.

As with most Osprey titles, this is certainly a welcome addition to any library. It perhaps does not provide guidance to an avid modeler eager to delve into Vietnam subjects, but the book does provide an introduction to the topic. Interested readers can follow up on their own in the fairly complete bibliography. The book reads like a typical operational history, to the point that I found the text rather dry, but it does provide a complete overview of some of the events that took place in one of the most pivotal years of the war. My thanks to IPMS, and Osprey Publishing for giving me the opportunity to review this book.