Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: A truly wonderful book. Templer writes with beautiful flowing prose, expressing complex ideas and thoughts in an enjoyable and easy to understand manner. Thoroughly researched, this well-organized book provides some essential history and how the history relates to the modern society, then covers all of the main issues of Vietnamese culture and society - including hunger, writing, AIDS, youth, and corrruption - bringing a picture to life of an often confusing and stereotyped land. I learned a tremendous amount from this book. Many of my pre-impressions and stereotypes were wiped away and I finished with more questions, more curiousity, and more understanding about this country that I expected. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: A truly wonderful book. Templer writes with beautiful flowing prose, expressing complex ideas and thoughts in an enjoyable and easy to understand manner. Thoroughly researched, this well-organized book provides some essential history and how the history relates to the modern society, then covers all of the main issues of Vietnamese culture and society - including hunger, writing, AIDS, youth, and corrruption - bringing a picture to life of an often confusing and stereotyped land. I learned a tremendous amount from this book. Many of my pre-impressions and stereotypes were wiped away and I finished with more questions, more curiousity, and more understanding about this country that I expected. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Suberb Account of Contemporary Vietnam
Review: After so many rosy portraits of Vietnam's future coming from the pens of investors or war-time protestors, this is a breath of fresh air. It tries to cover the Vietnam of the past decade, and does so with excellent investigation, plenty of supporting facts and useful anecdotes. The author does not go back into history more than ten years unless it is neccessary. It does for Vietnam revisionism what Karel Van Wolferen did for Japan's revision. Forget about "Dragon Ascending" or "Doing Business In Vietnam". If you want to prepare for a foray into Vietnam, this is your book.
Rating:
Summary: Finally -- a realist, unbiased, and professional assessment.
Review: After suffering through years of either bombast or glowing assessments by authors with ideological axes to grind or diplomatic masters to serve, readers get a genuinely honest and professional assessment from an observer who carried no intellectual "baggage" to Vietnam. The best work on Vietnam since Bui Tin's memoirs. What a shame that the current US administration could not be so realistic. The true motivations of the leaders of the "former" communist regimes in Vietnam and Cambodia are more easily understood through Robert Templer's brilliant work.
Rating:
Summary: True reflection of the *new* Vietnam
Review: As a Vietnamese-American, I applaud Mr. Templer for such an insightful work into the *mysterious, undefinable Viet*. I find his analysis on previous books about Vietnam within *Shadows and Wind* intelligent and right on the mark. What he reports on Vietnam is what I always knew is true but was unable to articulate to my American friends. Thank you so much for shedding all the myths that the media had portrayed all these years about the Vietnamese.
Rating:
Summary: Truly superb work on Vietnam
Review: For those expecting a soft-focus tourist travelogue vision of Vietnam, this may not be the book for you but if you want to read a really penetrating, insightful book about Vietnam and Vietnamese culture this is the best book to come along in a long time. It is illuminating, well written and covers so much about Vietnam from its food to religion to literature to politics to art and popular culture. For Vietnamese it is surprising that a non-Vietnamese learned so much about the country. Most books by foreigners about Vietnam are terrible. This is the exception in that the author really seems to have listened to people and reflects the real situation in Vietnam today, not just the tourist view or the government's propaganda.
Rating:
Summary: This book shows the real Vietnam
Review: Hey! Guess what? All American's view Vietnam as a Vietnam War movie and all French people see it as Indochine. And it does not stop there, all other writers about Vietnam do not know what they are talking about. Yeah, Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, Francis FitzGerald you don't know a thing either. And guess who the only guy who knows anything about Vietnam is? ROBERT TEMPLER! HE LIVED IN VIETNAM for THREE WHOLE YEARS AND HE KNOWS EVERYTHING! Well, that is what Robert Templer wants you to think! Shadows and Wind, which is occasionally interesting, is an arrogantly written and suprizingly boring look at Vietnam.The whole beginning of the book is Templer lecturing the reader on how bad the scholarship is on Vietnam and how he knows the real Vietnam. However after making such bold claims the book bogs down into some really boring chapters about what should be some interesting information about Vietnam. Basically pages 80-282 is a waste. The book does get interesting at point. I enjoyed the chapters on the role of food in Vietnamese culture and the relationship between China and Vietnam. I generally love books like this. The combination history, travel narrative. But boy, Templer is boring. The topics he brings up are interesting: AIDS in Vietnam, the state of the communist party in Vietnam, life in Hanoi, young people...but he finds a way to present it in a non-interesting way. But again, if you are going to bash other peoples views and writings about Vietnam, please back it with a good book. This is not a good book Reading through the current Lonely Planet or Rough Guide will give you a better picture of Vietnam today.
Rating: 
Summary: Arrogant, boring, and occasionally interesting look at 'Nam
Review: Hey! Guess what? All American's view Vietnam as a Vietnam War movie and all French people see it as Indochine. And it does not stop there, all other writers about Vietnam do not know what they are talking about. Yeah, Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, Francis FitzGerald you don't know a thing either. And guess who the only guy who knows anything about Vietnam is? ROBERT TEMPLER! HE LIVED IN VIETNAM for THREE WHOLE YEARS AND HE KNOWS EVERYTHING! Well, that is what Robert Templer wants you to think! Shadows and Wind, which is occasionally interesting, is an arrogantly written and suprizingly boring look at Vietnam. The whole beginning of the book is Templer lecturing the reader on how bad the scholarship is on Vietnam and how he knows the real Vietnam. However after making such bold claims the book bogs down into some really boring chapters about what should be some interesting information about Vietnam. Basically pages 80-282 is a waste. The book does get interesting at point. I enjoyed the chapters on the role of food in Vietnamese culture and the relationship between China and Vietnam. I generally love books like this. The combination history, travel narrative. But boy, Templer is boring. The topics he brings up are interesting: AIDS in Vietnam, the state of the communist party in Vietnam, life in Hanoi, young people...but he finds a way to present it in a non-interesting way. But again, if you are going to bash other peoples views and writings about Vietnam, please back it with a good book. This is not a good book Reading through the current Lonely Planet or Rough Guide will give you a better picture of Vietnam today.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly objective perspective on modern day Vietnam
Review: I am preparing a trip to Vietnam and I have been reading several publications on Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. I have to say that this book is so far the most revealing and objective account of Vietnam, it's recent history, and the trials and joys of it's people that I have read. It's incredibly refreshing to read something that so objectively discusses the many influences Vietnamese culture has endured in the past 50 years. Hopefully many will find that this book finally allows them to see the Vietnamese and their history from a perspective outside the American invasion.
Rating:
Summary: Real understanding of Vietnam
Review: I bought this book before I went to Vietnam on vacation and if provided me with far greater insights into the country than any other book I've read on Vietnam. So many books are just about the war but this one goes deep into Vietnamese life and culture, explaining so much about the place. You end up learning so much about the country. I was particularly impressed by the chapters on food, literature and religion that explained so much. A great book on Vietnam. I thoroughly recommend it.
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