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Rating: 
Summary: UNFORGETABLE STORY FROM THE HEART
Review: An amazing disclosure of the real facts of the American secret war in Laos. Dr.Charles "Jiggs" Weldon died recently. He,no doubt, deserves a prayer of gratitude from all of us for the gift of his compelling memoir.
Rating:
Summary: UNFORGETABLE STORY FROM THE HEART
Review: An amazing disclosure of the real facts of the American secret war in Laos. Dr.Charles "Jiggs" Weldon died recently. He,no doubt, deserves a prayer of gratitude from all of us for the gift of his compelling memoir.
Rating:
Summary: At the sharp end of the stick
Review: Charles Weldon (``Doc'' to most) has done us and the future a favour by writing his account of what surely was one of the most heroic, saddest wars of the 20th century. A legend in his prime during the height of the conflict in Laos, ``Doc'' Weldon paints a highly personal, sometimes emotional picture. The book is one of the few public recollections by the small group of men and women who participated in the Laos war of the 1960s and early 1970s. Tragedy in Paradise is extremely readable. It is a series of short chapters, each detailing an event in the Weldon tour of Laos. It details how he fought for aid money from skinflint Washington, and worked to establish a health system in a country which had nothing but a desire for one. The central figure is the crusty but kindly doctor, a caregiver by choice and administrator by order of the penny-pinching bureaucrats. Most them don't really care too much about Laos or its people, so long as the regulations are followed and the career tickets are punched. A main figure is one of those Laotian legends, Edgar ``Pop'' Buell, who could have been the model for the Ugly American. Buell made a deserved reputation as a dedicated friend of Laos, its people and particularly his beloved Hmong. In short, though, the book describes, in startling detail, how this tragic little war was lost, in the eyes of the men and women at the sharp end of the stick. It shows the duplicity of the senior Americans involved.
Rating:
Summary: A legendary man's perspective of a failed and forgotten war.
Review: Doc Weldon is one of the truly heroic and most-beloved figures of the war years in Laos. He once again serves all Americans well by recording the events of his time and reminding us what it means to be an American. Great things can be accomplished even in pursuit of a lost cause.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for all Lao under 60
Review: I laughed, I cried, and came out wiser from reading "Tragedy in Paradise". I only wish there were another Doc Weldon out there, somewhere, who would write the sequence to the plight of the Lao people in Laos, be they Lao Loum, Lao Theung, or Lao Soung.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for all Lao under 60
Review: I laughed, I cried, and came out wiser from reading "Tragedy in Paradise". I only wish there were another Doc Weldon out there, somewhere, who would write the sequence to the plight of the Lao people in Laos, be they Lao Loum, Lao Theung, or Lao Soung.
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