I picked up this entire series at a used book sale, so there'll be a lot of these reviews. Setting the Stage covers everything from the dawn of history to the end of WW2, and does a great job putting the Vietnam War in the context of Vietnam's centuries-long struggle against foreign domination, both Chinese and French, and the ageless conflicts of the rural peasant over land and taxes. The evils of French colonialism are explored in detail; the topheavy and ineffective French colonial bureaucracy extracted every bit of wealth from the land, while a new class of Vietnamese interpreters and cultural agents made themselves wealthy through corrupt business dealings. However, the rise of the Nationalist and Communist movements in the 1930s only gets a few chapters, along with the biographies of major figures. Perhaps the next book has more detail.