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Rating: 
Summary: Virtue is its own Punishment
Review: As well as its own reward. Thus the exiled Premier Ky kept his integrity and good name but ended up working 14 hour days in a liquor store in Orange County to support his children while the likes of Thieu made millions and lived the rest of their lives in luxury. It is difficult to understand the history of the Vietnam war without hearing the other side. Sadly, the 'other side' consists not of our enemies but our former allies. Ky was naive enough to suppose that America was represented by the president and his ambassadors, rather than the media. Had he courted the press and Hollywood the war might have ended differently, or, at least, while the NVA had AK47's and the US troops M-16s the ARVN might not have been saddled with M-1s.
Rifles so old even the U.S. National Guard didn't want them. Is his point regarding P.R. exaggerated? Well let's see; quiz show time. Name 10 films about Vietnam. Hmm...there's Platoon, of course, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Hanoi Hilton, Good Morning Vietnam, Born on the Fourth of July and I'm sure that given the time we could think of more, as there are over a hundred, easily. Now who could name ONE film in which a South Vietnamese soldier are presented as either brave, patriotic or honest? For that matter can you name a film in which they're presented as more than extras? Background fillers or , to use Ky's term "little brown men." Unimportant, really. Why is it that you'd have far better luck finding noble Germans and Japanese in a WWII flick? Required reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating at times
Review: Hindsight is always 20/20, especially with over 3,200 published titles on the Vietnam War and its outcome. American journalists, politicians, and veterans have been pointing the finger at the inept South Vietnamese and its shady leaders. "Blame corruption for our loss in Southeast Asia." Without a voice, America's former friends led silent, unremarkable, sometime angry lives in exile since the end of the war. Buddha's Child is an exceptional reflection by one of South Vietnam's top leaders 27 years after Soviet-made North Vietnamese tanks clanked unopposed through downtown Saigon. My family lived across the street from Gen Ky during the waning days of South Vietnam. My father flew with the South Vietnamese Air Force and served under the General for many years. Many revered him. Beneath the flair is a leader of integrity with plenty of loyalists even to this day. His story reveals a young officer serving a divided country led by inexperienced men caught in a middle of a civil war backed by two superpowers. One has to wonder if Gen Ky ever felt safe after the assassination of Pres Diem? Gen Ky also regrets not pursuing better PR in America during the war. It is doubtful that he would have resonated with Americans amid the social turbulence of the time. The book's final pages cover Gen Ky's poignant departure from Saigon and his difficult early years in America. When the war ended, his American peers went home, wrote bestsellers, led corporations, ran for Congress, and retired as four-star generals. Gen Ky had to start his life over in America like the million plus refugees who fled Vietnam. This is a must read book for those who want to understand the mistakes made in Vietnam by all involved.
Rating:
Summary: Important historical book
Review: How could it be anything else being written by one of the players. I think Cao Ky Nguyen confirmed many truths and it was important for that to come from a South Vietnamese leader. All that you need to do is keep in mind that he is trying to portray himself in a more favorable light than he deserves as he was just as politically immature as the rest of the inept leaders he comments on. The American lessons from Vietnam in essence are the old sayings that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, and that if you want something done right do it yourself. When you put Nguyen's rationalizations in a more accurate perspective, he makes this clear.
Rating:
Summary: Nguyen Cao Ky - a pawn or a man of destiny?
Review: In all honesty, I have learned some historical facts that I had not known before reading the book. Before I delve into the content the book, let me say that the book is well written. I enjoyed the audiobook, however, the producer of the audiotape should have consulted with a Vietnamese before attempting the Vietnamese proper names. The reader butchered the names horribly! It is ashamed that such an undertaking of almost 12 hours of taping did not go through this quality check. The publisher must have known that there are more than non-Americans who seek to learn about Mr. Ky and the Vietnam war. I could barely make out the names of the generals and the politicians involved. The names of geographical areas of Vietnam were horrendously mispronounced. It is unfair for me, in spite of the political 'dryness', has some humors and at times quite entertaining.
My. Ky is as boastful as he's ever been. There are endless mea culpas and monday-morning-quarterbackings throughout the book. But one cannot come to any other conclusion that with the leadership of Mr. Ky and his cohorts helped to lose the war in Vietnam.
He painted a picture of mass corruptions, shameless abuses of power, government properties, US aids, etc.. From president Ngo Dinh Diem to Nguyen Van Thieu, with questionable goals and intent, together brought south Vietnam to its deserved fall.
Mr. Ky failed to recognize that what he did during his youthful days was reckless and in a different setting such as the U.S, he would have been indicted on many charges. He was accused of derelict of duties by allowing his pilots to smuggle contrabands into VN not to mention allegations of drug smuggling. He used and abused government properties recklessly to woo girls by hovering aircraft on top of civilian neighborhood. He treated government asset as his own. He claimed that he did not take money from the people but he enjoyed his good life in many other ways. All of this would have been intolerable in western countries.
He conveniently left out the comment on how Hitler is his only hero (while he was in London , 1965). I believe that Mr. Ky did not corrupt the way many other generals did such as Gen. Dang Van Quang and Pres. Nguyen Van Thieu etc.. All in all, he was so wishful to think that he could have done any thing different better to 'save' Vietnam, it's almost laughable!
To his credit, I think Mr. Ky is a man of character, flawed as it is, few would have accomplished what he did during the war. He is an honest man!
Footnote: as critical as I am about this book, I did enjoy reading and did learn something from it. I have also obtained an autograph of the author.
Rating:
Summary: I could not put this book down.
Review: It is hard to know where to start in writing a review about this book; in one weekend, you will learn over two decades of intricate history; so few Americans, including myself, understood the VietNam Conflict. After you read this book, you will want to go and meet the authors; it is like they are talking to you in your living room. The book is a fair review of the corruption on the South and the brutality of the north. It has numerous pearls about leadership and life as well as a great historical read.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating at times
Review: This is a must-read book for those who want to understand that period of history when the United States
became mired in the Vietnamese quagmire. It is an easy read, despite some obvious spelling and grammatical errors,
and it is a unique look into the life of one of the most colorful players in the Byzantine game of Vietnamese politics
of that era. Westerners, usually from the media but also others as well, often describe Nguyen Cao Ky as flamboyant,
when they are not using other words such as "swell-headed" or "shallow". He lives up to his reputation
in this book, and some of the stories that he tells, from his courtship of a young woman in the seaside town of Nha Trang
to his dealings with American generals and politicians, are indeed fascinating, even if some anecdotes are not
sufficiently detailed. The book is rather thin for this genre, but there is no presumption that it is scholarly,
or that it should be pored over by academicians in search of another explanation as to why the most powerful country in the world
could not overcome the Communist violent takeover of South Vietnam. Rather, it presents the point of view of a man
who at a young age came to lead his young nation in its darkest moments. History is not kind to losers, and we in America have a tendency to think that the good guys usually win. But once
in a while, those who were defeated have a decent story to tell, and Ky is trying to do that with his book. He explains
the dilemma of Vietnamese patriots who wanted to fight against the French but could not swallow Communist
ideology, even at the cost of a twenty-year civil war. He is most clear-sighted when he points out that a good majority
of the South Vietnamese leadership consisted of French-trained men who took greed, religious, and regional rivalries to
extremes, even at the detriment of their struggling nation. He also asks some interesting questions that beg for answers from
those who had a hand in conducting the war in this country: at the start of the 1968 Tet offensive, why did US forces
not come to the help of their South Vietnamese allies until the morning after? Why did the US wait until 1968 to begin
giving more modern weapons to the same allies, while the Communist soldiers from the North had the best from Soviet and Chinese arsenals? At the end of the book, Ky pleads for the Vietnamese diaspora, which numbers some 3 million people living outside of their
native country, to forgive and forget because the old Communist hard-liners in Hanoi are disappearing through natural attrition.
He wants the younger generations to go to Vietnam to help their counterparts inside the country rebuild it. But as a man who has
traveled widely throughout the world since the fall of Saigon, it is telling that Ky himself has not found the time to go back to the country of his birth.
Rating:
Summary: Opportunity Lost?Seizing Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
Review: This was, in many ways, a painful book to read. I was in elementary school at a school for missionary children in northern Japan when I read in my Weekly Reader that Nguyen Cao Ky had become the new prime minister of South Vietnam. I remember the news gave me a sense of hopefulness about the war, which we were kept informed of by the Far East Network (armed forces radio) and the Voice of America. I can also remember my feeling of confusion when I read that Theiu had replaced Ky as Vietnam's leader. Without belaboring the point, I have long been frustrated by the American handling of the war, which, I believe developed out of our abdication in Korea. I don't want to spend time talking about that, because it is a tired and painful subject. Suffice it to say that this book confirmed my feelings, but added some new insight. For example, this book adds some insight into the resentment that many Vietnamese nationals felt toward the French, whose colonialism was largely exploitive, and financed by the Americans in amounts that Everett Dirksen would call "Real Money." In addition to that, I did not know, until I read this book, that Westmoreland was fully informed of the North Vietnamese intention to stage a major invasion during Tet, but decided to keep this from the South Vietnamese army! This appalling mismanagement of the crisis produced a disastrous and completely unnecessary problem for the Cao Ky, but it was a challenge that the South Vietnamese met and overcame. While Tet had a demoralizing effect on the American public, it was actually a victory for South Vietnam, and a major defeat for the North Vietnamese. The book also addresses some more familiar themes, such as the legendary ineptitude of McNamara, but the most poignant event in this book is Nguyen Cao Ky's impulsive decision to abdicate leadership in favor of Thieu. Nobody (including Nguyen Cao Ky himself) knows why he did this. Perhaps it really was a selfless act of a patriot who had no interest in promoting himself, and was just trying to do what was best for his country. Or, perhaps, he had become bored with the monotony of leadership, and decided to abandon his responsibility, just as he discarded his wives, one after another, when he got tired of them. To his credit, Nguyen Cao Ky takes full responsibility for his fateful decision. And it would not be fair to say that he abandoned his country completely, because he was always ready to serve, and to lead when the chips were down. In that sense, we must give credit where credit is due, and call him a patriot. But this is small comfort for the painful realization that the war effort was doomed by his decision, although I am still not sure if I believe that it was more significant than the moral exhaustion of the American culture, which rendered the Americans all but impotent to save Vietnam. Read this book. Nguyen Cao Ky is a very good storyteller, and a man of adventure who liked to live on the edge. You will almost certainly come away better informed about the first war the Americans lost. It is a sad story, but one which can have a certain measure of redeeming value if we are able to learn from our mistakes, and adapt to the very different place that east Asia has become.
Rating:
Summary: Opportunity Lost¿Seizing Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
Review: This was, in many ways, a painful book to read. I was in elementary school at a school for missionary children in northern Japan when I read in my Weekly Reader that Nguyen Cao Ky had become the new prime minister of South Vietnam. I remember the news gave me a sense of hopefulness about the war, which we were kept informed of by the Far East Network (armed forces radio) and the Voice of America. I can also remember my feeling of confusion when I read that Theiu had replaced Ky as Vietnam's leader. Without belaboring the point, I have long been frustrated by the American handling of the war, which, I believe developed out of our abdication in Korea. I don't want to spend time talking about that, because it is a tired and painful subject. Suffice it to say that this book confirmed my feelings, but added some new insight. For example, this book adds some insight into the resentment that many Vietnamese nationals felt toward the French, whose colonialism was largely exploitive, and financed by the Americans in amounts that Everett Dirksen would call "Real Money." In addition to that, I did not know, until I read this book, that Westmoreland was fully informed of the North Vietnamese intention to stage a major invasion during Tet, but decided to keep this from the South Vietnamese army! This appalling mismanagement of the crisis produced a disastrous and completely unnecessary problem for the Cao Ky, but it was a challenge that the South Vietnamese met and overcame. While Tet had a demoralizing effect on the American public, it was actually a victory for South Vietnam, and a major defeat for the North Vietnamese. The book also addresses some more familiar themes, such as the legendary ineptitude of McNamara, but the most poignant event in this book is Nguyen Cao Ky's impulsive decision to abdicate leadership in favor of Thieu. Nobody (including Nguyen Cao Ky himself) knows why he did this. Perhaps it really was a selfless act of a patriot who had no interest in promoting himself, and was just trying to do what was best for his country. Or, perhaps, he had become bored with the monotony of leadership, and decided to abandon his responsibility, just as he discarded his wives, one after another, when he got tired of them. To his credit, Nguyen Cao Ky takes full responsibility for his fateful decision. And it would not be fair to say that he abandoned his country completely, because he was always ready to serve, and to lead when the chips were down. In that sense, we must give credit where credit is due, and call him a patriot. But this is small comfort for the painful realization that the war effort was doomed by his decision, although I am still not sure if I believe that it was more significant than the moral exhaustion of the American culture, which rendered the Americans all but impotent to save Vietnam. Read this book. Nguyen Cao Ky is a very good storyteller, and a man of adventure who liked to live on the edge. You will almost certainly come away better informed about the first war the Americans lost. It is a sad story, but one which can have a certain measure of redeeming value if we are able to learn from our mistakes, and adapt to the very different place that east Asia has become.
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