Books about Vietnam

[pigamus]

I'm currently in the middle of reading The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. I don't really know that much about the Vietnam war, and I might be tempted to go down the rabbit hole a little bit. What are the best books on Vietnam, in your opinion?

[An tSaoi]

Dispatches by Michael Herr is the obvious one. He went on to co-write Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.

[Ham Bap]

This about the My Lai massacre:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Lai-Vietnam-Darkness-American-ebook/dp/B071YGSHZD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1157EY2HDXEPA&dchild=1&keywords=my+lai+massacre&qid=1628087589&sprefix=my+lai%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-1

[Pavlov`s Dog`s Dad`s Dead]

I've just returned to the UK after 3.5 years in HCMC, so of course I've got absolutely no recommendations for you, and there are two excellent reasons for that: all the English-language books on the place are either about the American War, or cooking. Now, Vietnamese food is delightful, but the recipe books don't make for a riveting read.

Meanwhile, the war just seems like such a reductive prism to view the place through, especially as so much of the writing comes from outsiders rather than locals. If you really must, try Bao Ninh's Sorrow of War, which is written from the perspective of an NVA vet. Unsurprisingly, it's grim from the first page onwards, and it does highlight the fratricidal nature of the war between north and south that often gets lost behind the American involvement.

On a very different note, I'm enjoying Mel Schenk's Southern Vietnamese Modernist Architecture, although I find I'm dipping into it rather than reading from start to finish.

My daughter speaks highly of Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and I'm hoping to prise that from her at some stage and read it myself, but I gather it's more about the emigre experience than Vietnam itself. Of course, the extensive diaspora means that this is also an important aspect of understanding the various ramifications of what it means to be Vietnamese.

[pigamus]

Thanks people - has anyone read the Max Hastings book, and is it any good?

[KennyMonster]

The Last Day - John Pilger

A diary like account of the final few days of the American invasion as the yanks pack up and leave.

Pilger has written more extensively about the war in other books of his, I believe, but I have only read The Last Day so far.

[Satchmo Distel]

Stanley Karnow's book influenced me greatly in the mid-80s: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96110.Vietnam

[pigamus]

Thanks - I might go with the Ken Burns one

[Mr Farenheit]

The Sorrow of War, mentioned above, is really good as there's not much esle like it from the Vietnamese perspective. The author appears a lot in the Ken Burns documentary on Netflix.

I read 'Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam' by Mark Bowden recently about the brutal building-by-building urban warfare in the city which I think is not so well known. The pumelling the Americans received in the early phase is crazy and at times Catch-22 like (orders for almost suicidal attacks based on a politcal assumption that it was impossible for the enemy to have so many troops or be so well trained). It has a lot of interviews with people who were there at the time which is illuminating (especially the Vietnamese) but in the end this aspect gave me a bit of 'Ken Burns fatigue' where you're reading about the personal background of some dude from Bumfuck, Arizona. After a while these all blend into one and you lose a sense of the overarching narrative of the battle. Still worth a read though!

I haven't read the Max Hastings one, on the list. Sounds like it would be worth a read but I get the impression his opinions will piss me off when reading it (not necessarily the position he takes which I can agree with or not but the complete assuredness that 'this is how it is'). Anyway, he was there as a journalist at the time and admits that his opinion of the war has changed a lot since then so its an interesting perspective.

[Ignatius_S]

Thanks people - has anyone read the Max Hastings book, and is it any good?

I haven't got round to it yet (picked it up when it was cheap) but I've read two his history books, which were excellent - very readable but with an impressive amount of details - this one was very well received.

[monkfromhavana]

There was a book my brother had that was meant to be quite good. Think it was written by a US helicopter pilot and called "Chickenhawk". Only thing I can remember (we're talking 30 years ago) is him flying back to base after a rescue mission, but because space was so limited and not leaving anyone behind, they had the wounded lying on those stretchers outside the helicopter on top of dead bodies.

[Swoz_MK]

I bought this a few years ago but is still on the to read pile, meant to be excellent - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12292260-kill-anything-that-moves

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few "bad apples." But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."

Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

[El Unicornio, mang]

If you're down for a more magazine-style read with pics, this set is worth picking up on eBay, about 600 pages total.



Think the hardcover version collects all 20 issues together as well, for less then 20 notes.

[A Hat Like That]

Thanks people - has anyone read the Max Hastings book, and is it any good?

A few years back. It did a good job of telling the bigger picture - the history goes back and the book covers the French Vietnam war - and it has enough details and writing flourishes to be an entertaining read.

Dispatches and Chicken Hawk are good. What the author of the latter got up to after Vietnam is quite a good read.

[Inspector Norse]

If you're after fiction then I read Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn, a long novel about a company of soldiers fighting over a base on the Laotian border, and thought it was very good
I also read Denis Johnson's award-winning Tree of Smoke, a long and wide-ranging look at the war from several different perspectives, and found it totally forgettable.

[pigamus]

I've just discovered that The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns has gone down to 99p for the Kindle edition on Amazon. Which is bloody ludicrous, but good, if anyone's interested.

[Virgo76]

I'm currently in the middle of reading The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. I don't really know that much about the Vietnam war, and I might be tempted to go down the rabbit hole a little bit. What are the best books on Vietnam, in your opinion?

I assume we're talking about the war? Not Vietnam itself?
The Things We Carried, by Tim O'Brien is good.