Rating: 
Summary: Not Another pat on Hanoi's back from a guilty American!
Review: If I am forced by my college professor to read another book by a journalist who went back and saw how great life is in Vietnam because America (and the South Vietnamese people) lost to Hanoi, I'm going to puke.
If you want read a book by a person who actually lived there for three years after the Communist took over, and doesn't replay every played out how great it was that North Vietnam was "united" with South Vietnam, then read Shadows and Wind.
If you want to get a real understanding of Vietnam and the Vietnamese people (this is a Vietnamese writing), then read The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War. I think you'll find it very refreshing: unlike Mr. Graham who almost didn't survive the experience, I don't recall Mr. Lamb ever having spent eleven months in a Hanoi-run re-education camp to get the truth about Vietnam!
Rating:
Summary: Paradise Found?
Review: If I didn't know better, I'd have thought Vietnam was heaven on earth after reading this book! Over and over the author tells us how unified in thought and spirit the people of Vietnam are with their totalitarian government. The party line is "Vietnam likes Americans", and everyone he meets shares this view (surprise). While questioning the government's need to repress speech and all forms of expression, he explains that this country with 80 million people has fewer dissidents than would be found in "a backwoods Michigan town on a single block"! Clearly, the idea of repression never seriously came to this author's mind. As a foreign journalist and a guest of the government he didn't feel repressed, so what's the problem? I shudder to think that Mr. Lamb is naive enough to think that the carefully constructed experience the Vietnamese government provided him with bears more than a passing resemblance with reality, but apparently he does. It brings to mind the NY Times reporter Walter Duranty who lived in Moscow while Stalin did his worst (1930's), but somehow never had anything but glowing accounts to send back to the US about this glorious new society. Just to be clear, I share the author's stated affection for the people of Vietnam. This is what makes his whitewash of the brutal regime they live under so outrageous. As an alternative to this book (or at least a supplement), I would recommend "Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese" by Steven Mosher. While the culture, geography, and time period are different, Mosher's account of everyday life in rural China is truly touching and manages to break through the facade orchestrated by the Chinese government.
Rating: 
Summary: Vietnam Now - Wow!
Review: In this book, David Lamb returns to Vietnam thirty years after covering the war as a journalist. He spent four years living in Hanoi and during this time he explores Vietnam and interviews many people including well-known figures of the war such as the Vietnamese Radio Personality Hanoi Hannah and General Vo Nguyen Gap. Lamb also interviews numerous Vietnamese citizens and also tags along with a group of former American and Viet Cong soldiers who are searching for reconciliation. In Vietnam, Now, Mr. Lamb draws comparisons and contrasts and in doing so paints a vivid picture of what Vietnam of the 1960's versus what Vietnam now is like. As he states in the introduction to his book: "The Vietnam I experienced was really two different countries, and neither had much to do with the other. The first was the Vietnam of the American War, as the Vietnamese call it... It was the Vietnam of body counts and illusionary lights at the end of the tunnel. It was a Vietnam that, I now realize, I understood shamefully little about, being largely ignorant of the country's history, culture, and people..." "The other Vietnam is the one that wove the spell and teased me of the ghosts of a bygone Indochina... This is the postwar Vietnam, where for the first time in more than 100 years a generation has grown into adulthood not knowing foreign domination of the sound of battle... I stayed four years, far longer than I had intended, and during that time I found that nothing was quite as I had expected it to be." It is the country, the people, and the history, that David Lamb discovers during his four year return to Vietnam, and it is the stories of this country, its people, and its history that Mr. Lamb weaves into all 270 pages of Vietnam, Now. Even though I hadn't been born yet, the writing and description in this book transported me back to the era of war and fighting now known as the Vietnam War Era. This book also did a magnificent job of placing me in Mr. Lamb's shoes during peacetime in Vietnam. I recommend this book to anyone looking to gain knowledge about the country and people and history of Vietnam as a whole, not just as a war seen through American history books. Pick up a copy of Vietnam, Now. After reading this book you will be left with one adjective to describe it - "Wow."
Rating:
Summary: Moving, informative, and timely
Review: The author spent four years, 1996 to 2000, in Vietnam and his book is filled with information and is not fiction like Nelson deMille's Up Country, which is also an account of present-day
Vietnam. I think the points that Lamb makes about the men who fought in Vietnam are informative and little known--drug use in Vietnam was about the same as in the U.S at the time, the suicide rate was similar, the honorable discharge rate the same as before the war, etc. The account of men who returned to Vietnam to visit is full of poignancy. I thought this was a moving and thoughtful and poignant book, and much more attention-holding than I expected. No bibliography, though.
Rating:
Summary: Astoundingly naive, inaccurate look at Vietnam
Review: This book was an extraordinary disappointment. It is an astoundingly naive look at contemporary Vietnam that glides over the surface of the country and the people in the most unbelievably superficial way. Like so many war correspondents who returned to relive their younger days, the author is utterly trapped by his memories and unable to see the reality of Vietnam today -- a country where most people live in griding poverty but communist party officials enrich themselves. Where the leadership are more concerned with jailing journalists and poets than they are with tackling the endemic corruption that completely undercuts the government and has frayed the hopes of the people in the future. Lamb is breezily dismissive of dissent, imagines that because he was left alone as a high-profile US journalist, that everyone in the country enjoys the same freedoms. This book is all about his impressions -- it is really nothing about the Vietnamese. If you are interested in middle aged American guilt about what happened in Vietnam it may be the book for you but if you actually want to know anything about the country read something else -- anything else, in fact. Glib, inaccurate, sloppy and irresponsible -- if someone wrote such an unthinking, worthless book about any subject in the US it wouldn't stand a hope in hell of being published.
Rating:
Summary: Right on, David Lamb
Review: This is a fascinating review of the political aspects of the war in the US and Vietnam and how it has affected people personally. Lamb's style makes it readable and entertaining. Its impossible to keep some opinions out of a necessarily historical work, but I was there in '70-'71 and everything in the book seems accurate from my impressions and those of the Marines I served with. ...
Rating:
Summary: I highly recommend this book.
Review: To anyone who lived through the period of Vietnam this book makes more sense out of what happened than anything written before.
Lamb's fresh angle (and the perspective of time) allows a dispassionte understanding previously unavailable. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: It's a country, not a war...
Review: Vietnam is a country of 78 million living in an area a bit larger than the size of Italy. The people and the landscapes of this nation are both extremely diverse. But to many, Vietnam is simply a war, a chapter of history, a place of terrible memories. Lamb does an excellent job of showing, through his words, Vietnam's beauty and diversity. During his travels from Hanoi to Saigon (HCMC), he interviews Vietnamese people from all walks of life. Some remember the war vividly, some were not born yet, some could care less. For most Vietnamese, the American War is something that has long passed. Lamb illustrates what Vietnam really is, an amazing country with some of the FRIENDLIEST people on Earth. If you can not go to Vietnam (but by all means, GO! I just returned and I found it to be most amazing!), please read this book. I think you will quickly learn that there is a LOT more to Vietnam than the American War.
Rating:
Summary: It's a country, not a war...
Review: Vietnam is a country of 78 million living in an area a bit larger than the size of Italy. The people and the landscapes of this nation are both extremely diverse. But to many, Vietnam is simply a war, a chapter of history, a place of terrible memories. Lamb does an excellent job of showing, through his words, Vietnam's beauty and diversity. During his travels from Hanoi to Saigon (HCMC), he interviews Vietnamese people from all walks of life. Some remember the war vividly, some were not born yet, some could care less. For most Vietnamese, the American War is something that has long passed. Lamb illustrates what Vietnam really is, an amazing country with some of the FRIENDLIEST people on Earth. If you can not go to Vietnam (but by all means, GO! I just returned and I found it to be most amazing!), please read this book. I think you will quickly learn that there is a LOT more to Vietnam than the American War.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye-opener
Review: Vietnam, Now, by David Lamb, is truly an eye-opener. This novels consists of David Lamb's accounts of visiting Vietnam both when he was a soldier during the Vietnam war, and later again about 30 years post- war. He compares and contrasts the two different time periods when he visited, with much detail, using unique writing techniques that transport the reader into Lamb's shoes. Vietnam, Now eliminates many misconceived notions of Vietnam held by many Americans today. Overall, this is a well written book and an excellent read for anyone.
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