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Summary: follow up information
Review: there is a collection of photographs that go with this book and some updated information pages on the web site thecatfromhue dot com
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Summary: powerful and worth reading
Review: This book is a bit daunting to start reading since it is 850 pages and much of it is an account of war on the ground in Vietnam. But I found as I read that it is a tour de force and much is of high drama, taking one into the grunt world that Laurence lived in as a TV journalist (CBS) where the viewpoint is quite different from that of a print journalist. While Meo, the cat the book is named for, occupies only about 50 pages of the book, those pages are a delight to read, even tho one figures Laurence is exaggerating a bit in describing the tough cat which he found in Hue and his behavior. This book is powerful and is rightly ranked with Dispatches, by Michael Herr, which I read with appreciation on July 6, 1999, as a great Vietnam book. However the best book still that I have read on the war in Vietnam is We Were Soldiers Once...And Young, by Harold G. Moore and Joe Galloway. But this book belongs on the same shelf of great books about Vietnam.
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Summary: You must read this!
Review: This is undoubtedly one of the finest books I have read and belongs up there with Michael Herrs'"Dispatches",Sheehans'"A Bright Shining Lie" and Halberstams "The Making of a Quagmire".Laurence doesn't paint the story with gore and the usual shocking war tales because he doesn't have to, his unique and beautiful writing style let the reader visualise for themselves and his prose is so vivid and clear and fluid that you soon get totally absorbed into the story.The 800 plus pages are not enough and although you speed towards the end you really dont want it to finish.From the quiet moments of the old French colonial style hotel room to the goofy bunker party on a lonely firebase and from Madison avenue to Con Thien this story is the authors facinating life and he kindly brings us along.I thank John Laurence for what he's done, it may have taken 30 years but it was definitely worth the wait.
Rating: 
Summary: the cat from hue
Review: This over-800 page book (paperback version) is the personal memoir of a front-line television reporter (john laurence) during the viet nam war. This book is much more about Mr. Laurence, than about the viet nam war. Those interested in the latter will probably be disappointed. The book describes in detail mr. laurence's professional experiences as a journalist and this should be of great interest to fellow journalists. He also briefly discusses his personal growth during the viet nam war and some political aspects of the war. there is not a great deal of combat reportage in this book. This book also does not address in any detail whatsoever the personal experiences of solders and citizens affected by the war, nor the political, cultural, and historical aspects of the war.
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Summary: Powerful and Moving
Review: This wonderful book rates with the finest war memoirs--of any war. Like all the great memoirs, it illuminates the gap between the political aspirations of war and the horrible reality. And it demonstrates how that gap alters individuals and societies.The book is long, but never tedious. The stories presented are startling even though we have heard, read, and seen so much about Vietnam already. Particularly interesting is the extraordinary access journalists had to the field, and the increasing constriction by the military as this particular journalist reported less than flattering accounts of the war. Mr. Laurence presents the soldiers as decent individuals in extraordinary circumstances. He neither unreasonably lionizes them or criticizes them. Best of all, he never pretends to be one of them even though he spent enormous time in the field. (In contrast, I note a recent article by Joseph Galloway in the Chicago Tribune promoting the movie version of his book. In reading it, one would think that Galloway was a member of the Cavalry unit he covered. While he obviously spent difficult and dangerous times with them, and justifiably respected these soldiers, his absorption into the military culture undermines one's sense of his objectivity). Moreover, the reliability of Laurence's accounts are hard to dispute since so much of it was on video or audio tape. What ultimately makes this book so magnificent is the emotional commitment Laurence applies to it. Undeniably, this book matters to him. This sincerity of purpose lends an honesty to his work that many books on the subject of war lack. One can imagine that John Laurence would have written the book whether it was published or not. That it was published is truly our good fortune...answered.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but hardly great.
Review: What makes this book an interesting read is the length of time Mr. Laurence was in Vietnam and the freedom he had to cover the war from it's inception through Tet and the Cambodian invasion into post-war Communism. He witnessed and reported admirably on most of the seminal events of the war. However, the book can hardly be called, as it is on it's back cover by the Boston Globe, "Homeric". It is too self-absorbed, and at times too catty :) to be called epic literature.
Ironically, although Laurence seems almost Gump-ian in his presence at the major milestones of the war, he unfortunately missed the most successful strategy employed in the war. The Marine Corps' implementation of Combined Action Platoons (CAP), taken from their 1940 Small Wars Manual was successful but derided by Westmoreland as undoable. Laurence has nothing to say on this matter, and that is unfortunate. ...
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Summary: "We left Viet Nam but it did not leave us."
Review: When all is said and done, Jack Laurence will be recognized as certainly the best television reporter to cover the Viet Nam war, if not one of the best reporters, period. Yet I was prepared to be highly skeptical as I opened this book. As a CBS reporter who came to Viet Nam about a year after Jack Laurence left I had grave misgivings about how he and some of my colleagues had covered the war. Although I still disagree with some of Jack's views, I find this to be a simply superb book, one that should be read by all Americans who have an interest in that war, and especially by those who are curious about the TV networks covered it. This book is searingly honest and precise, so honest, in fact, that it will open up Jack to criticism from many who believe that "the press lost the war." As a personal memoir, it is as good or better than such books as Michael Herr's "Despatches," Phil Caputo's "Rumor of War," and Jon Swain's "River of Time." Because it has a much broader scope than those books, it may some day may be ranked among the very best books to come out of Vietnam. As a Jack Laurence tells you in his opening author's note he and his ultra-cool cameraman -- Keith Kay -- recorded either on sound tape or on film tracks much of the dialog you read in the book. Jack also reconstructs from his notes much other dialog that is simply riveting. As one who also worked with some of the same people, I can say their voices as you hear them in this book are exactly as they spoke. The voices of the Marines, soldiers, pilots, officers and grunts you hear in this book are absolutely authentic. The detail is astonishing. If you want to know who it REALLY was like in Viet Nam, read this book. It is better than even the rave review it got from the New York Times, and the encomiums it has received from some of the famous names on the flyleaf. Read it. You'll find it hard to put down. Peter Collins
Reporter, Viet Nam
20 June 1971 -- 29 April 1975
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