Based on official documents, oral histories, and memoirs, So Much to Lose, by William J. Rust, a senior journalist and communications consultant, examines a lesser-known case in the foreign policy records of the Kennedy administration; namely, John F. Kennedy's policy in Laos.
This informative book has an introduction, eleven chapters, and an epilogue. The introduction provides an overview of Kennedy's policy in Laos in the context of U.S.-Soviet confrontation in the 1960s. Chapters 1–7 reveal how Laos was neutralized through the ratification of the Geneva Accords in July 1962. Rust portrays the three competing Laotian factions (i.e., neutral, rightwing, and leftwing), and their interactions with the high-level diplomatic elites in the Kennedy administration. Chapters 8–11 analyze how and why Laos's neutral status collapsed. In the epilogue, Rust describes the sudden end of Kennedy's policy in Laos, which led to more bloody armed conflicts than those in the pre-Geneva era....