As leader of South Vietnam from 1954 to 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem was hailed by some as a "miracle man" who had saved his country from communism. Others denounced him as a U.S. puppet or as a reactionary mandarin. In Misalliance, Edward Miller refutes these simplistic caricatures and presents a new interpretation of Diem and the rise and fall of his alliance with the United States. Drawing on American, French, and Vietnamese archival sources, Miller shows how Diem engineered his own rise to power and outmaneuvered his rivals in Saigon during the mid-1950s. He then embarked on an ambitious program of nation building that was based not on the advice offered by his U.S. advisors, but on his own vision of Vietnam's modernization. Overturning the conventional wisdom about Diem, Miller shows that he was a man with a plan--a plan that turned out to be deeply flawed, with disastrous consequences for both Vietnam and the United States.