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Rating: 
Summary: I really wanted to like it
Review: I was interested in a survey history of the Vietnam War, you know, someplace to start. I'm a huge fan of Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States." This book is the second in New Press' series (edited by Howard Zinn) "People's History" So this book should have been just up my alley. But "People's History of the Vietnam War" is terrible. Perhaps one of the worst history books I have read. I often find myself agreeing with much of the author's perspective, but it was so poorly written. The author basically collects quotes from other books on the Vietnam War and haphazardly dumps them in. I'll just cite a few examples. . . 1. Jonathan Neale uses a lengthy quote from a *novel* to illustrate the problem of U.S. soldiers raping women in the section in his Guerrillas chapter "The Experience of Women." He even acknowledges that it was a novel so "perhaps she saw that and perhaps she did not." There must me factual accounts of violence against women in Vietnam that Mr. Neale could have used, instead of a work of fiction. 2. The last chapter (the longest) reads more like a political tract on current events than a history of Vietnam. Neale discusses the "Vietnam Syndrome," which is appropriate, but goes on to discuss Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, globalization, Palestine, 9/11, etc. I understand Neale's interest in making his book relevant to today and these events and situations are affected by the Vietnam War, but does he have to give more detail to them than he does the subject of his book? 3. Neale loves these little tangents, which have a dubious place in a short book on the history of the Vietnam War. In another tangent Neale goes off to describe his version of the Russian Revolution and it's decline. Later he discusses Marxism and Marx's theories about role of the working class. In another little aside he cites the reason for the U.S. bombing of Kosovo was Saddam Hussein's standing up to the U.S. three months prior(!). Besides these examples there are many mistakes, arguments that don't get any support, an over reliance on just few sources, and a high school research paper approach to writing. Neale's oversimplification of class in the U.S. and Vietnam is embarrassing. This book could have been great. I'm not familiar with another survey history of the Vietnam War written from a bottom up perspective. But this book was extremely disappointing. I would be surprised if Howard Zinn really read this book. It is nothing like his well written "People's History of the United States."
Rating:
Summary: I really wanted to like it
Review: I was interested in a survey history of the Vietnam War, you know, someplace to start. I'm a huge fan of Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States." This book is the second in New Press' series (edited by Howard Zinn) "People's History" So this book should have been just up my alley. But "People's History of the Vietnam War" is terrible. Perhaps one of the worst history books I have read. I often find myself agreeing with much of the author's perspective, but it was so poorly written. The author basically collects quotes from other books on the Vietnam War and haphazardly dumps them in. I'll just cite a few examples. . . 1. Jonathan Neale uses a lengthy quote from a *novel* to illustrate the problem of U.S. soldiers raping women in the section in his Guerrillas chapter "The Experience of Women." He even acknowledges that it was a novel so "perhaps she saw that and perhaps she did not." There must me factual accounts of violence against women in Vietnam that Mr. Neale could have used, instead of a work of fiction. 2. The last chapter (the longest) reads more like a political tract on current events than a history of Vietnam. Neale discusses the "Vietnam Syndrome," which is appropriate, but goes on to discuss Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, globalization, Palestine, 9/11, etc. I understand Neale's interest in making his book relevant to today and these events and situations are affected by the Vietnam War, but does he have to give more detail to them than he does the subject of his book? 3. Neale loves these little tangents, which have a dubious place in a short book on the history of the Vietnam War. In another tangent Neale goes off to describe his version of the Russian Revolution and it's decline. Later he discusses Marxism and Marx's theories about role of the working class. In another little aside he cites the reason for the U.S. bombing of Kosovo was Saddam Hussein's standing up to the U.S. three months prior(!). Besides these examples there are many mistakes, arguments that don't get any support, an over reliance on just few sources, and a high school research paper approach to writing. Neale's oversimplification of class in the U.S. and Vietnam is embarrassing. This book could have been great. I'm not familiar with another survey history of the Vietnam War written from a bottom up perspective. But this book was extremely disappointing. I would be surprised if Howard Zinn really read this book. It is nothing like his well written "People's History of the United States."
Rating:
Summary: Misleading, Trotskyist account of the US attack on Vietnam
Review: Jonathan Neale, the author of this book, is an American writer, an anti-globalisation activist and a member of the International Socialist Organisation. Chapters cover the Vietnamese people, why the USA attacked Vietnam, US atrocities, the guerrilla warfare, the US protests, the US soldiers, Vietnam and Cambodia after the war, and the USA and the world after the war. But unfortunately, the book is a Trotskyist account, so it is completely misleading about all the key elements of the war.
For example, Neale supports the US government's continuing hostility to Vietnam when he smears the Vietnamese government as `corrupt'. He parrots the US state's point of view, writing that the Vietnamese government "signed a mutual defence treaty with Russia late in 1978, and that pushed them into war with Cambodia and China."
This is a travesty of the truth. From 1975 onwards, the murderous Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, backed by the US state, had continuously attacked Vietnam, killing tens of thousands of people, until in December 1978 the Vietnamese counter-attacked and freed Cambodia.
And China that attacked Vietnam in 1979, not the other way round, after the US state had given Deng Hsiao-Ping the green light. Neale claims that "the victims of this war were the Chinese minority in Vietnam", again taking the US state's point of view, that the Vietnamese government was the aggressor, not the Chinese government.
This is typically Trotskyist - just enough class analysis to be plausible to a few, but always backing the counter-revolution at key moments, backing the US state in its counter-revolutionary attack on the Vietnamese people. Similarly, Trotskyists backed the kulaks against the Bolsheviks in the 1930s, the landlords in Hungary in 1956, the mujehadin in Afghanistan in 1989, and Boris Yeltsin in the Soviet Union in 1990.
Trotskyists always pontificate about other people's struggles, patronisingly telling the Vietnamese what they should have done at every moment, yet they never get it right for their own country.
Anyone interested in the Vietnamese people's historic victory over US imperialism should read Ho Chi Minh's writings, not this shoddy book.
Rating: 
Summary: Making Sense of Vietnam
Review: Using a Marxist class perspective, Neale makes sense of the post WWII history of Vietnam in all its complexity. In fact, having read Neale's history, the standard nationalist histories which insist on nation states as the central actors, seem not just inadequate, but misleading. By emphasizing the clash of Vietnam's many masters and would-be masters, both colonial and local, including Asians -- Japanese and Chinese -- French, and U.S., Neale gives us compelling and instructive insights into time and a place that is now remebered by most Americans as the first war the U.S. ever lost, a war that created a syndrome that could only be overcome by winning the first Gulf War. Particularly good on how the French colonists and the Vietnamese landlord class ruled amicably for a number of years, the insurgence of the Marxist inspired North Vietnamese, followed by the arrival of the U.S. to prop up the French Catholic Vietnamese dictatorship in the name of global anti-communism. An excellent and even awesome achievment.
Rating:
Summary: Making Sense of Vietnam
Review: Using a Marxist class perspective, Neale makes sense of the post WWII history of Vietnam in all its complexity. In fact, having read Neale's history, the standard nationalist histories which insist on nation states as the central actors, seem not just inadequate, but misleading. By emphasizing the clash of Vietnam's many masters and would-be masters, both colonial and local, including Asians -- Japanese and Chinese -- French, and U.S., Neale gives us compelling and instructive insights into time and a place that is now remebered by most Americans as the first war the U.S. ever lost, a war that created a syndrome that could only be overcome by winning the first Gulf War. Particularly good on how the French colonists and the Vietnamese landlord class ruled amicably for a number of years, the insurgence of the Marxist inspired North Vietnamese, followed by the arrival of the U.S. to prop up the French Catholic Vietnamese dictatorship in the name of global anti-communism. An excellent and even awesome achievment.
Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Primer to the Vietnam War
Review: Whether you are already familiar with the war, or new to the subject, this book is an excellent addition because of the approach it takes. While most history is written from the view of the powerful, this book concentrates on those segments of the population typically brushed aside in the telling of history, i.e. the masses. To quickly address the previous reviewer's comments on the book--
Regarding the novel quoted from describing the rape scene: that was only one aspect of the author's approach; he also quotes directly from soldiers who witnessed such acts. If you want hard numbers on the number of rapes, good luck finding out, at least in any establishment histories or sources. While the number has been estimated in the hundreds of thousands, it was certainly a number the U.S. was unconcerned with, just as it was unconcerned with the numbers of Vietnamese dead (estimated to be 3 to 4 million dead peasants in that war). J. Neale broaches the topics of the Russian revolution, McCarthyism, and classism here at home; but does so as to give the Vietnam war a more proper context. Wars don't occur in vaccums, and he points out that there were a number of factors that contributed to the U.S. terror in Vietnam. Regarding the oversimplifications, you'll find that in any concise approach to telling history, particularly something as monolithic as the Vietnam war which spanned 4 decades. If you want a greater understanding, you'll need to read from a lot of sources. Lastly, regarding the author's tying in of Vietnam with today's wars, the author is merely doing what a historian ought to be doing. Learning about previous acts of U.S. terror serves no purpose on its own unless the ultimate aim is to affect the terror that continues today. Many of the lessons of Vietnam aptly apply to Bush's acts of terror and aggression in the middle east today. If you're looking for an establishment history of the war, try Robert McNamara's "In Retrospect" which is a typical exercise in apologetics for American terror (i.e. WE were attacked by Vietnam, OUR intentions were moral and good, WE suffered in the war, etc.) If you enjoy this book, and want to read one of the other (very few) humane tellings of the Vietnam war, try SECRETS, by Daniel Ellsberg.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Primer to the Vietnam War
Review: Whether you are already familiar with the war, or new to the subject, this book is an excellent addition because of the approach it takes. While most history is written from the view of the powerful, this book concentrates on those segments of the population typically brushed aside in the telling of history, i.e. the masses. To quickly address the previous reviewer's comments on the book--
Regarding the novel quoted from describing the rape scene: that was only one aspect of the author's approach; he also quotes directly from soldiers who witnessed such acts. If you want hard numbers on the number of rapes, good luck finding out, at least in any establishment histories or sources. While the number has been estimated in the hundreds of thousands, it was certainly a number the U.S. was unconcerned with, just as it was unconcerned with the numbers of Vietnamese dead (estimated to be 3 to 4 million dead peasants in that war). J. Neale broaches the topics of the Russian revolution, McCarthyism, and classism here at home; but does so as to give the Vietnam war a more proper context. Wars don't occur in vaccums, and he points out that there were a number of factors that contributed to the U.S. terror in Vietnam. Regarding the oversimplifications, you'll find that in any concise approach to telling history, particularly something as monolithic as the Vietnam war which spanned 4 decades. If you want a greater understanding, you'll need to read from a lot of sources. Lastly, regarding the author's tying in of Vietnam with today's wars, the author is merely doing what a historian ought to be doing. Learning about previous acts of U.S. terror serves no purpose on its own unless the ultimate aim is to affect the terror that continues today. Many of the lessons of Vietnam aptly apply to Bush's acts of terror and aggression in the middle east today. If you're looking for an establishment history of the war, try Robert McNamara's "In Retrospect" which is a typical exercise in apologetics for American terror (i.e. WE were attacked by Vietnam, OUR intentions were moral and good, WE suffered in the war, etc.) If you enjoy this book, and want to read one of the other (very few) humane tellings of the Vietnam war, try SECRETS, by Daniel Ellsberg.
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