Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian G. Appy ISBN: 0-670-03214-X Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 22 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (20 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Best Vietnam Oral History Yet
Comment: I have read a few oral histories focused on the American phase of the Vietnam War. I have found them all faulty for one of three reasons. They are either fraudulent, the authors biases scream out at you, or they are incomplete (most common is not including South Vietnamese viewpoints). Mr. Appy has surmounted these pitfalls and produced a decent work.
Most refreshing to me is seeing the pro-West South Vietnamese perspective. I found the South Vietnamese Diplomat who specialized in trying to sell the war to Americans and the captured ARVN commando most intriguing. But there is more. Appy has samples of the whole spectrum. You can find high ranking pro war, low level anti war, communists, republican (South Vietnamese that is), soldier, guerilla, pilot, etc. You name the type of person, he/she is probably represented.....except for parties from the Free World Forces (Korea, Australia, Thailand, etc that also fought in the war). Still, this is a pretty minor omission.
I docked this book one star. To say Mr. Appy is biased is too harsh. I think its better to say has bought into the notion the US/Republic of Vietnam war effort was pointless. Ive seen Appy do a few interviews on TV. He always states the South lost because they were just puppets dependent on foreigners to keep them afloat (which ignores the fact that AK47s dont grow on trees and the Chinese Army units that garrisoned the North to free up NVA units going South were far from home grown). This attitude can also be found in the book. A good example is a footnote of Appy's that reinforces a Communist Vietnamese source's notion that Korean troops were just mercenaries. I am plugged into the Korean community and know quite a few of their Vietnam Vets. Money (in the form of US aid) was a very minor consideration in their participation. Despite this, Appy gives all sides a voice in his book. For this, he should be commended!
Rating: 5
Summary: Summation in Retrospect
Comment: Christian G. Appy has, for this reviewer, provided the most comprehensive evaluation of the Vietnam War that has been published. Appy holds a degree in American Civilization, which indicates a degree that encompasses more than history, more than the melting pot beginnings of a country comprised entirely of emigrants whether contemporaneous or historical, more than comparative religions, ideologies - more than each of these components alone. And this umbrella of 'American Civilization' knowledge suffuses this large tome with a yearning for coming to grips with how we as a nation have inflicted and suffered wars.
By introducing each of his sections and subsections with terse, cogent essays of historical fact, Appy opens the doors for understanding the 135 interviewees he recorded both here and abroad (abroad in this case emphsizes Vietnam). Part One: Introductions leads us into the tenor of the book, allowing the words of high military personal from both the US and the Vietnamese forces from South and North to be interspersed with words of victims, reporters, doctors, corpsmen, spies, and citizens from both sides. Part Two: Beginnings 1945 - 64 utilizes this broad spectrum of interviewee types and shows the errors in judgment and philosophy bilaterally that inexorably marched toward war. Part Three: Escalations 1964 - 67 throws us into the fray of the atrocities of the battles on the field and in the minds of all involved. Part Four: The Turning Point 1968 - 70 begins with the infamous TET offensive and its subsequent effects on the moral of the troops and the antiwar demonstrators at home. Part Five: Endings 1970 - 75 addresses the obvious futility of the war, the peace talks gone awry, the lies about My Lai and the Christmas bombing of Hanoi and those in Cambodia and Laos, and the Watergate termination of Nixon's reign. Part Six: Legacies 1975 to present examines the whole bloody error of the worst historical mistake and defeat on the part of the US government and military. The voices of writers Tim O'Brien, Oliver Stone, reporters, veterans, generals, Vietnamese vistims, Daniel Ellsberg, Westmoreland, Alexander Haig - all ultimately speak to the war that should have never been.
Appy writes cogently, documents his interviews and his facts well, and gives a more rational history of this War than most who have written about it. This is not an easy read: the book is long (600 pages), dense, and at least for this Vietnam Veteran a painful review of the complete picture. PATRIOTS: THE VIETNAM WAR REMEMBERED FROM ALL SIDES is timely in its publication. Hopefully enough people will read this book to awaken to the similarity between Vietnam and Iraq. War is simply NOT an answer.
Rating: 5
Summary: It's difficult to praise the book enough!
Comment: I'd like to begin this review with a few of the things that may have been left out in the reviews below. First, although this is a lengthy book, it is constructed in such a way that it could be almost twice as long and the reader would wish for more (in fact the author states that he had to excise plenty of great material in the interests of brevity; I wish that he hadn't). This is because within the broad chapter overviews he has condensed interviewee statements into spaces sometimes as small as a couple of paragraphs. In fact, it is amazing how much pith the author is able to include in such abbreviated memoirs. Second, as is hinted below, Mr. Appy has produced a book with the broadest time spectrum yet of the English language literature that has been produced on the war, that I am aware of. Third, Mr. Appy has generously included a plethora of book titles within the body of the work and in the bibliography from both participants in his survey and books that he has used for reference. Many of these books were new to me and I've read or passed on dozens of Vietnam War books in the past two years. So, if you are on the hunt for new reading material this is a great resource. Finally, one of the things hinted at but not specifically mentioned in reviews below, the unfolding of events in Vietnam and the way they were canned and served to the American public has some very disturbing parallels to the present Bush Administration's machinations in Iraq (No, I don't believe that Iraq is America's new Vietnam war, rather I suggest that the reader look toward Russia's involvement in Chechnya for a more apt simile). Apart from this, the book's wide breadth of time and topic, and broad spectrum of views guarantees that, no matter how expert one fancies oneself to be on the Vietnam War, he will inevitably glean new information or insight into this little bit of Indochinese nastiness that was the Vietnam War (the American War in Vietnam). I go so far as to make two additional predictions. One is that those of you who either have children or are above the age of 35 will find yourselves with tears welling up in your eyes at least once in the course of the book. The other is that you will find yourself reading some of the narratives here in this book in a state of either amazement or shocked outrage, perhaps both. Finally, a quick overview of how this book is set up: The book is arranged under 5 broad topics: Beginnings, Escalations, Endings, etc. Within these broad categories are smaller ones with headings such as War Heroes, Triage, Families At War, etc., and within these are the narrative accounts from various participants from all sides and from numerous different angles. Often, the author has embellished these micro-accounts with a kind of preface and aftercommentary treatment, and while the going is at times quite heavy, at no point does this book cause one to wish to walk away from it. What otherwise might have taken me a couple of days to read was a three or four day journey just because there was so much emotional debt to pay for all of the information contained in this book. This trenchant read is a really, truly magnificent work that demands your attention, commands your respect, expands your mind and yes, wins your heart.
 |
Title: They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967 by David Maraniss ISBN: 0743217802 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
 |
Title: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg ISBN: 0670030309 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 10 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
 |
Title: American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam by Peter S. Kindsvatter ISBN: 0700612297 Publisher: University Press of Kansas Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
 |
Title: Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam by Christian G. Appy ISBN: 0807843911 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The Other Side of Heaven: Postwar Fiction by Vietnamese and American Writers by Wayne Karlin, Le Minh Khue, Vu Truong, Truong Vu ISBN: 1880684314 Publisher: Curbstone Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
