Air War Over North Vietnam: The Vietnamese People's Air Force: 1949-1975 (Vietnam Studies Group)

Rating:
Summary: Truth is the first casualty
Review: This book is, to put it bluntly, a fraud. The "author" says in the forward that the information in the book comes from research and personal interviews conducted in Vietnam and from internal Vietnamese Air Force documents. In fact, the book is nothing more than a considerably abridged, very slightly edited and annotated TRANSLATION of the official "History of the People's Air Force of Vietnam" (LICH SU KHONG QUAN NHAN DAN VIET NAM) published in Vietnam in 1993 and freely available to the public there. I have checked Toperczer's book against the "History of the People's Air Force" and found that virtually every paragraph, every sentence, every word of Toperczer's book is lifted directly from the "History of the People's Air Force." He did not even bother to change the order of the book, so I could do my checking directly page by page from one book to the other. I have been able to identify only one very short paragraph in Toperczer's entire book which is original. Otherwise, the only thing that Toperczer has added to the Vietnamese history are the photographs and, in one or two places, the names of pilots (most of the pilots names are given in the Vietnamese book). Neither the "author" nor the publisher cite the Vietnamese History as a reference. They claim copyright for the book, which in my admittedly non-professional legal opinion is a blatant violation of the copyright agreement reached between the U.S. and Vietnam in 1997 and which took force in 1998. Not that I feel any particular sympathy for the Vietnamese Air Force, which apparently holds the copyright rights, in this matter - I just don't like people claiming credit for work that is not theirs.

Rating:
Summary: Truth is the first casualty
Review: This book is, to put it bluntly, a fraud. The "author" says in the forward that the information in the book comes from research and personal interviews conducted in Vietnam and from internal Vietnamese Air Force documents. In fact, the book is nothing more than a considerably abridged, very slightly edited and annotated TRANSLATION of the official "History of the People's Air Force of Vietnam" (LICH SU KHONG QUAN NHAN DAN VIET NAM) published in Vietnam in 1993 and freely available to the public there. I have checked Toperczer's book against the "History of the People's Air Force" and found that virtually every paragraph, every sentence, every word of Toperczer's book is lifted directly from the "History of the People's Air Force." He did not even bother to change the order of the book, so I could do my checking directly page by page from one book to the other. I have been able to identify only one very short paragraph in Toperczer's entire book which is original. Otherwise, the only thing that Toperczer has added to the Vietnamese history are the photographs and, in one or two places, the names of pilots (most of the pilots names are given in the Vietnamese book). Neither the "author" nor the publisher cite the Vietnamese History as a reference. They claim copyright for the book, which in my admittedly non-professional legal opinion is a blatant violation of the copyright agreement reached between the U.S. and Vietnam in 1997 and which took force in 1998. Not that I feel any particular sympathy for the Vietnamese Air Force, which apparently holds the copyright rights, in this matter - I just don't like people claiming credit for work that is not theirs.