Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [389]
Michael Herr Dispatches. Infuriatingly narcissistic at times, Herr’s spaced-out narrative still conveys the mud, blood and guts of the American war effort in Vietnam. Herr’s distinctive tone is also evident in the classic war movie, Apocalypse Now(See "Coming to terms with the war"), for which he wrote the screenplay.
John Laurence The Cat from Hué. Highly acclaimed for his coverage of the Vietnam conflict for CBS News from 1965 to 1970, Laurence has written not only an evocative memoir but also a moving testimony to the courage of the American troops who, like him, came of age in the battlefields of Vietnam.
Tom Mangold and John Penycate The Tunnels of Cu Chi. The most thorough, and the most captivating, account yet written of the guerrilla resistance mounted in the tunnels around Cu Chi.
Robert Mason Chickenhawk. Few people can be better qualified than Mason to deliver an account of the American War: a helicopter pilot with over a thousand missions under his belt, his blood-and-guts, bird’s-eye account of the war is harrowing but compelling.
Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway We Were Soldiers Once and Young. This blow-by-blow account of the ferocious battle of the Ia Drang valley, among the earliest encounters of the American War, makes compelling reading as the authors recapture the chaos and fear alongside moments of incredible courage and the sheer determination to survive.
Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone. Through a mix of autobiography and fiction O’Brien lays to rest the ghosts of the past in a brutally honest reappraisal of the war, his own actions and the events he witnessed.
John Pilger Heroes. Journalist Pilger’s systematic dismantling of the myth that America’s role was in any way a justifiable “crusade” makes his Vietnam reportage required reading.
William Prochnau Once Upon a Distant War. Now that all the journos ever to set foot in Vietnam have published memoirs, Prochnau presents a new twist – the intriguing story of the people (amongst them Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam and Peter Arnett) who wrote the stories of Vietnam.
Neil Sheehan A Bright Shining Lie. This monumental and fluently rendered account of the war, hung around the life of the soldier John Paul Vann, won the Pulitzer Prize for Sheehan; one of the true classics of Vietnam-inspired literature.
Dang Thuy Tram Diaries of a War Physician. The story behind these diaries written by a young North Vietnamese doctor killed in action is as poignant as the entries themselves. Their release caused a storm in Vietnam in 2005. So far only an online English-language version is available at www.vietnam.ttu.edu.
Justin Wintle The Vietnam War. Written in reaction to the shelves of long-winded texts available on the subject, Wintle’s succinct overview manages to condense this mad war into fewer than two hundred pages.
Tobias Wolff In Pharaoh’s Army. A former adviser based in My Tho, Wolff’s honest, gentle autobiographical tale takes a wry look at life away from the “front line”.
Books |
Postwar Vietnam
Bui Tin Following Ho Chi Minh. An erstwhile colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, Bui Tin effectively defected to the West in 1990, since when he has been an outspoken critic of Vietnam’s state apparatus. These memoirs don’t flinch from addressing the underside – corruption, prejudice, naivety and insensitivity – of the party.
Adam Fforde and Stefan de Vylder From Plan to Market. Highbrow, laudably researched book plotting the route Vietnam has taken from Stalinist central planning to market economy. Fforde and de Vylder hold the fabric of doi moi up to the light for examination in the mid-1990s.
David Lamb Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns. War journalist David Lamb returned to Vietnam for a four-year stint in 1997. While the war is a constant presence, this is primarily a commentary on contemporary Vietnam and its prospects for the future. Lamb is ultimately optimistic, though his criticisms of the government – notably its failure to reconcile