
Vietnam
An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $35.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Max Hastings
-
Peter Noble
-
By:
-
Max Hastings
An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author of The Secret War.
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the US in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet Offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom 40 died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bar girls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.
No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ fans know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
©2018 Max Hastings (P)2018 HarperAudioListeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...


















Spectacular!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Another Hastings Gem
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Tragedy and truth
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A masterful accomplishment
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A Great History
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
great
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Long and Good
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very comprehensive review of an important historical moment
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
However I am also deeply grateful for the level of research that must have gone in to this book. It to me is on the level of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for its in depth study of this particular war and associated time.
A deeply nuanced dive into a deeply complicated war.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
an Englishmans narrative...sublime
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.