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OT: New Vietnam War Book

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Posted 2/2/2019 1:20 AM (GMT 0)
Many of us older guys are Vietnam Vets. Getting VA Benefits for prostate cancer due to Agent Orange exposure used to be a regular topic of discussion.

There is a recently published book on the Vietnam War that may interest some of you.: Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975. Max Hastings is an eminent historian and writes about the whole 30-year conflict from the French involvement in 1945 until the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in 1975.

My Vietnam War was the year 1972 during the Vietnamization phase. 120,000 North Vietnam troops crossed the DMZ into South Vietnam during the Easter Offensive in the biggest battle of the war, which lasted six months. I was in the Navy and we provided coastal bombardment of the Ho Chi Minh trail and other targets. You could feel the earth shake whenever the B-52s from Thailand and Guam dropped their 500-lb bombs.
Posted 2/2/2019 3:18 AM (GMT 0)
I was in engineering school at that time and the war ended in 1973 so never served. Was in last class to get student deferments as I recall. I have a lot of respect for those who served in Vietnam and still remember my draft number, will never forget it like many of us from that era. I lived in DC area when the Memorial was complete and it about crushed me when I visited it. Sad memories...

I really liked the PBS series by Ken Burns, brought back memories of the time. Does this book cover the same period in a lot more depth? Only read a few books about ‘Nam and they were about one person’s experience typically, not an accounting of the war.
Posted 2/2/2019 4:41 AM (GMT 0)
Mumbo,

I have yet to watch the Ken Burns Vietnam War series. This book is by a respected historian who was a journalist for much of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. He has conducted countless interviews with war veterans and uses newly available material from North and South Vietnamese and American records It weighs in at 750 tightly packed pages, so undoubtedly the depth of coverage exceeds that of Burns' Vietnam.
Posted 2/2/2019 11:58 AM (GMT 0)
I too am of the era. I was in high school and college and did not serve but many friends did. I enjoy learning more about the war and look forward to reading it. Last year I read the new book about the battle of Hue. Fascinating read, but terrible how we wasted so many lives there.
Posted 2/2/2019 2:47 PM (GMT 0)
Thanks Tim, I knew it would be in more depth but I guess I was wondering if it was more a historical accounting of the war or endless interviews with participants? Long books can be long for the wrong reasons sometimes.
Posted 2/2/2019 5:20 PM (GMT 0)
As we who were there know, no single book can capture what that darn war was all about, and the Ken Burns series was a politically slanted disappointment. We did our best.
Posted 2/2/2019 5:40 PM (GMT 0)
Tim,
Thanks for the heads up on the new book. I was in country from Dec 67 - Nov 68, Navy coastal surveillance, Tet offensive and all that. I've read a lot of the Vietnam war books - Frances Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake" was until now the opus that covered the political history of the war - both within south and north Vietnam and in the U.S. government. It sounds like this new book may cover similar ground. I'll add it to my list. I highly recommend Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" - a book about the career of John Paul Vann in Vietnam both as an Army officer and a civilian rather than a history of the war. I recently read ":Hue 1968" by Mark Bowden an intense and scary account. I was down coast in Danang on the safe end of a radio throughout of the battle in Hue where our Marines were outnumbered and nearly surrounded through weeks of house-to-house fighting. I remember the official daily intelligence summaries saying our Marines were "mopping up in Hue" which we knew was pure BS rolling down-hill from Saigon.

Jim

Post Edited (Bohemond) : 2/2/2019 11:04:06 AM (GMT-7)

Posted 2/2/2019 5:44 PM (GMT 0)
There are a number of reviews out there for this work (often a sign that the book has something to say), and I thought this review did a good job of highlighting the scope and tone:

http://www.startribune.com/review-vietnam-an-epic-tragedy-1945-1975-by-max-hastings/500632782/

When a good number of books have been written on a particular topic, a reasonable question to ask when another one comes out is: what does this new one have to offer that the previous ones did not?

I haven't read this book, but from looking at commentaries about it on the web, it seems that the author has interwoven a detailed scholarship with vivid personal accounts, and, to judge from reviews, has done so successfully, not an easy task.

Yes, I plan to read it (added it to my list), and, having served in Nam, will see just how many memories as well as insights it produces for me as I go through the pages.

And books like this about Vietnam actually do have an immediate relevance for some of us here on the forum, as Tim G suggests above. As soon as I get my hands on the book i will check the index for any references to Agent Orange, to see what if anything the author has to say about that. Some of us for sure, and others possibly, like me, had exposure to it while over there, which may have had a hand in forming our PCa experiences.

But I totally agree with garyi who just said that no one book will ever capture the totality of either the Vietnam War, or the experiences of those who served there. But one more contribution such as this one, trying to do so, does help.

Likely a good read for those interested.

(And here's a short Youtube video of the author himself talking about the book, and what he was trying to say in it)

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=vietnam+an+epic+tragedy+review&view=detail&mid=98d8c56060248339412a98d8c56060248339412a&form=vire
Posted 2/2/2019 9:31 PM (GMT 0)
Not a vet and can't add to the Agent Orange discussion. And haven't read the Hasting's book, but Halberstam's "Making Of A Quagmire" is good at covering the history into the early years of the war. As was the Burns series.

And Halberstam's "The Best And The Brightest" is excellent for depictions of all the Harvard and Yale guys who were oh so smart they were going to solve Vietnam. Except they weren't that smart. And LBJ placed great trust in them.
And after awhile McNamara and others knew it was unwinnable. But we put in many more years and lost many more guys.
Posted 2/2/2019 9:57 PM (GMT 0)
There have been a couple of mentions of the Ken Burns series. You may remember one of the frequent commentators in the series was a former north Vietnamese soldier with bleached blonde hair. That was Bao Ninh who wrote "The Sorrow of War" - fiction, but rooted in his own experience as an NVA soldier. In real life he was one of 10 survivors from his 500 man brigade, though I assume the other 490 probably includes wounded out of action as well as KIA.
Jim
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