Vietnam - by Max Hastings

Book Synopsis

An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling 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 United States 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 forty 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 bargirls, 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' readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first 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.

From the Back Cover

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 United States 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 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 overwhelmingly as one for the Vietnamese people, of whom forty 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 we are given 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 Hastings's readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle, and presents many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. In Vietnam, Hastings marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

Review Quotes

"This balanced and insightful book is a pleasure to read. It destroys the fantasy that one side or the other held the moral high ground or a monopoly on devastating folly." - Karl Marlantes, author of What It Is Like to Go to War and Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War
"This is a comprehensive, spellbinding, surprisingly intimate, and altogether magnificent historical narrative." - Tim O'Brien, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Things They Carried
"We've seen a shelf-load of histories, analyses, memoirs, and novels on Vietnam. But what Hastings does in Vietnam is pull all these genres together in a highly readable and vivid narrative that, I think, will become the standard on the war for many years to come." - NPR.org
"A comprehensive and compelling narrative that illuminates political and military tactics and strategies -- and the daily realities of a war that killed 2 million people." - Pittsburgh Post Gazette
"[Hastings] brings his usual brilliant descriptive skills to the action, mixing individual anecdotes with big-picture considerations.... The sole satisfying outcome of two recent American interventions in poor nations with incompetent governments is likely to be more superb histories by Hastings. A definitive history, gripping from start to finish but relentlessly disturbing." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Monumental....Hastings sees the Vietnam War in much the same way as that anguished villager. In his telling, it was a conflict without good guys....Through vivid accounts of battle and suffering, Hastings shows that the American war machine devastated the society it intended to save....he deserves enormous credit for helping us, half a century after the peak of the fighting, to see beyond old arguments about which side was right. What is visible when the blinders come off is indeed no pretty sight." - New York Times Book Review
"A work of considerable quality, marked by a possibly unique combination of military expertise, historical grasp and journalistic skill in unearthing hitherto undiscovered human stories of the war, as well as judiciously selecting from among others already known. It helps, too, not to be an American, because that lends a certain useful distance.... It is a very sad story and one that Hastings tells very well." - Guardian
"Vietnam is a product of Hastings' prodigious research and his aptitude for pungent judgments. It is an unsparing look, by a warm friend of America, at the mountain of mendacities, political and military....Almost every Hastings page contains riveting facts.... as successful as printed words can be in achieving his aim of answering the question 'What was the war like?'" - Houston Chronicle
"A gripping, well-researched look at a divisive American war." - New York Post