Many wars have outsized and enduring effects on the societies that fight them, but for Americans the Vietnam war has one attribute that guarantees its longevity as a suppurating wound in the national psyche: it was a loss.

Analyses have been numerous and perennial, from David Halberstam’s contemporary portrait of the policymakers who led the country into war, The Best and the Brightest, to last year’s mammoth ten-part documentary series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, The Vietnam War.