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Summary: A masterful history of America¿s most regrettable war.
Review: "Vietnam: A History" is a masterfully written history of America's involvement in Vietnam - certainly one of the two best single-volume histories (along with "A Bright Shining Lie," by Neil Sheehan) of America's most regrettable war that I've read. Written by Stanley Karnow, a former Southeast Asian correspondent for "Time" and "Life" magazines, and "The Washington Post," this book is a comprehensive and fascinating look at the Vietnam war, from its underlying causes at the end of World War II, to the final takeover of South Vietnam by its Communist neighbor, North Vietnam, in April 1975.Karnow delivers with crisp and precise prose an account of the Vietnam War which is both fair and objective. He analyzes the conflict from both the political and military standpoint, and is unsparing in his criticism of errors made by political and military leaders on all sides of the conflict. Three areas of this book were especially interesting to me: first, the author's account of the conflict between the French and Viet Minh, and how the French were defeated at Dienbienphu in 1954; second, how the U.S. government formulated its Vietnam policy under the Kennedy administration, and how that policy ultimately failed; and third, how Richard Nixon, upon becoming President in 1969, changed America's Vietnam policy and began the process of "Vietnamizing" the war. (Karnow's candid description of how the Kennedy administration initially supported South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, then tacitly approved of the 1963 coup d'etat which resulted in Diem's murder is fascinating.) "Vietnam: A History" is an essential book for the reader interested in gaining a good understanding of the war and its causes. Highly recommendable reading!
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Summary: The most accurate account of the Vietnam conflict I've read
Review: A brilliant telling of the history of Vietnam which shows the before and after of a nation so rapidly exposed to western civilization.
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Summary: History Thoroughly Researched
Review: A great work. This is a cogent presentation of the history of the Vietnamese people. Well worth reading if you want to attempt understanding our American predicament there.
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Summary: The Best of the Best on the Vietnam War
Review: As is related in the beginning of this book, Vietnam: A History is well read in Vietnam today--probablly due to the fact-based, unbiased, reporting style the author uses. The book is split into two divisions. The first, containing a vast history of Vietnam, which can be laborious to get through, yet for history buffs, worth the effort. Second, the Vietnam War. It is the second part of the book which will leave the readers awed by the ineptness and corruption of U.S. & South Vietnamese leadership--both military and political, especially at top levels--angry by the uninformedness of the American people, and shocked by the great cost in lives and property to two warring groups, whose involvement and happening was entirely preventable. Probably no other person was, or is better qualified to write the Vietnam story than Stanley Karnow, who lived in Paris in the 1950's, as a U.S. foreign news correspondent during France's fight for dominance in Vietnam. He also interviewed numerous key participants. He dug into once classifed U.S. documents to reveal unknown information, and he researched and reported on the recollections of high-level polticians, dignataries, military leaders, and the soldiers, men, and women who fought on both sides. An outstanding work! I'd recommed reading "Paris in the Fifties" by the same author as a primer to this book.
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Summary: The First Complete Account of Vietnam At War!
Review: Author Stanley Karnow offers a very comprehensive, fair-minded history of America's war in Vietnam. Karnow has filled the pages of his book with fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with hundreds of participants on both sides of the "conflict."
The central theme of the book is that America's leaders, prompted as much by domestic politics as by global ambitions, carried the United States into Southeast Asia with little regard for the realities of the region. The Truman administration first set America's course in Vietnam by supporting France's futile effort to reimpose its rule there as a barrier against Communism; then Eisenhower pledged the nation to South Vietnam's defense; John Kennedy and his aides deepened the American commitment by their complicity in a plot that led to the assassinationof President Ngo Dinh Diem; Johnson sent in hundreds of thousands of American troops; Nixon and Kissinger, finally, made the concessions that led to the Communist victory they had for so long, and at such a high price, hoped to prevent.
This book is a historical treasure by way of unflinching and accurate narrative. For example (p.302): "The crackdowns on the Buddhist temples in August had been carried out by Colonel Tung's special forces on orders from Nhu. But General Dinh, who approved of the raids as Saigon commander, claimed credit for them, boasting that he had rescued South Vietnam from Buddhists, Communists, and 'foreign adventurers,' his transparent euphemism for Americans. 'I have defeated Henry Cabot Lodge,' he announced. 'He came to stage a coup d'etat, but I, Ton That Dinh, have conquered him and saved the country.'"
What a great book. There are not enough superlatives. This is the definitive history of America's involvement. I rate this book at five stars. A masterpiece. Bravo!
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Summary: Very holistic and heavy stuff about decission making
Review: During the years I've read lots of Vietnam books. Especially my inters has been ; how did the vise men of USA enter this ill fated, astronomically expensive (by all standarts) war. Karnow`s book is the best so far even though it's hard and heavy to go thru. Not a war book. Has given me lot's of thinking as an business executive.It seems that very big decissions are made a) with very little knowledge or b) by "the end justifies the means" c) both. In war,politics and business. Tapio Makelainen Vice-President. M.Sc. Helsinki, Finland
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Summary: Thorough & Fair-Minded Treatment Of America's War
Review: For those of us of certain age and particular life experience, this book sounds too much like a quite uncomfortable forced patrol down a very muddy, torpid, and uncertain memory lane. That said, I must confess that I was pleasantly surprised when I finally broke down my resolve to avoid reading it and then devoured this massively documented and carefully researched book on Vietnam by journalist Stanley Karnow. It is indeed a fair-minded, comprehensive and well-constructed chronological look at one of the most ill-fated and unfortunate military efforts in modern American history, and one holds his breath in recognizing the risks as we start down that ineluctable path toward greater and greater commitments of men and material in a vain effort to force from outside a predetermined political solution for Vietnam for which there was little of no popular support within the country itself. As in Korea, the international concerns for providing separate areas of political influence for both the communists and the "democratic forces" at the close of WWII as a practical way of settling issues with the Soviet Union led to the partitioning of the country. This ultimately led to the establishment of an innately unstable political situation that by being both arbitrary and locally unpopular literally begged at indigenous attempts to alter the modus vivendi. As a result, through our lack of understanding and our arrogance, we consistently insisted on various courses of actions that were not only indifferent to the actual politics of the area, but were deaf, dumb, and blind to the ways in which such actions inevitably served to progressively alienate us from the indigenous people and their strong and quite insistent political will. From the beginning, when we agreed as a friendly gesture to set aside our better judgment and allow the French to regain their colonial holdings in what was then popularly referred to as Indochina, everything went wrong. The popular leader of the indigenous Vietnamese anti-Japanese guerrilla movement, Ho Chi Minh, asked for American support but was refused based on our ill-advised attempts to appease the French by allowing them to return to the area. As the resistance to the French colonial regime mounted, it was increasingly clear the French had their hands full. And by the fall of the French at Dienbienphu in 1954, the Vietnamese were running a very effective, forceful, and determined effort to drive the colonialists out of the country. Thus, throughout the 1950s we pursued policies that not only alienated the popular leaders like Ho, but also supported blatantly corrupt and profoundly anti-democratic autocrats like the Diems in South Vietnam as a countermeasure against the strong communist regime north of the lines of partitioning. American foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s was so completely dominated by our naïve perception of a united worldwide communist movement to conquer the world that we responded by supporting whoever we viewed as strong enough to prevent such local communist takeovers. Thus Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson each pursued a consistent policy of communist containment in Vietnam that led to increasing American support for whatever regime currently in power in the south. After Kennedy's death, that escalation took wings. The author's approach does much to organize and rationalize the chronology of events, and one finds himself swept along recognizing that we are being sucked into a vortex with no clear point of extraction should things backfire. And during the next ten years, from 1964 to 1974, everything that could go wrong surely did. All of it is covered graphically, compassionately, and comprehensively in this massive, entertaining, and quite literate history of America's tragic involvement in the longest and most painful modern in its history. There are other excellent books on Vietnam, such as Frances Fitzgerald's "Fire In The Lake" and Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie", but neither of those books stands as quite the accomplished work of objective, accurate, and well-documented chronological history that this book is. I highly recommend it, and hope it finds its way to rest on your bookshelf.
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Summary: The Definitive History of the Vietnam War
Review: I first read Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History when it was first published, some 16 years ago. Since then I have read numerous other accounts of the Vietnam War, and Karnow's remains my favorite. It is the most interesting, most informative book on this conflict I have read.
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Summary: A fairly even-handed account
Review: I found this book to be very enlightening, especially the early history of Vietnam. I just missed out on going over, but I do remember the nightly updates on the news. Mr. Karnow sheds some light on the political intrigues going on behind the scenes, and the misguided thinking that got us into this morass....We (the US) of course denied it officially; but we were guilty of our share of "war crimes" in Vietnam. I recommend the book, and the companion video series (which I watched also). It was interesting seeing the cast of characters described in the book in real life (circa 1981-1983). Again, I think Karnow does a fairly even-handed job of covering the totality of our involvement in Vietnam. Have we learned anything from Vietnam? Well, as evidenced by our action in Kosovo, no. ...
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Summary: A Well Written and Even Handed Account of the War.
Review: I had the unfortunate experience of taking a college level Vietnam Course that was completely one sided. The course was openly hostile to the American point of view and too sympathetic to the Communists. I am not saying I agreed with the war, but I feel a course or a book on the war should show boths side. I feel Karnow does this in his book. the book is well written and easy to read. Plus it does a good job of showing all the points of view of the war. Anyone looking for a book with a good background and overall history of the war should get this book. Read it and draw your own conclusions.
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