Vietnam: An Epic History of a Divisive War 1945-1975
Written by Max Hastings
Audiobook 33 hours
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Release date Sep 20, 2018
ISBN 9780008296377
This is an impressive & gripping historical account of a terrible war that had its roots in colonialism.
The tragedy lay in the failure of Vietnam to achieve self-determination and independence after the defeat of the French in 1954.
Despite the grotesque nature of the story, it is beautifully written. This surely must be the author Max Hasting’s masterpiece.
Destiny is a strange thing. These days I find myself living in Hanoi. An family member’s uncle who was a soldier in the North Vietnamese Army does not want to be interviewed about his wartime experiences fighting in the south. Most people were not born when the war finished in 1975, and the hard trial-and-error process of constructing a new society began, held back by an unworkable ideology.
Now we can see the Vietnamese people in the North and the South as victims of the Cold War. Also we can see, in hindsight - as a result of Iraq, Libya, Syria - that the people of Vietnam were also victims of US imperialism.
And the cause of this imperialism? Maybe it is this thing called Empire, the phenomenon that has been with humanity since the Roman times and earlier, as recorded in the Old Testament.
As I write. the people in Gaza are victims of this phenomenon, with America backing one side.
What a brilliant and prolific writer is Max Hastings. I don’t begrudge his imperial knighthood received from the British hereditary monarch who once ruled by divine right.
Hastings says at the end of this his epic work that he retains the ‘moral right’ to be accepted as author of this book. This implies that many other players in the story, on both sides of the epic struggle, whose accounts were more likely than not quoted verbatim, might legally claim some piece of the authorship. But I doubt it. Overall opinion: the best historical account of the Vietnam War ever written.
Description from http://everand.com
About this audiobook
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘His masterpiece’ Antony Beevor, Spectator
‘A masterful performance’ Sunday Times
‘By far the best book on the Vietnam War’ Gerald Degroot, The Times, Book of the Year
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people.
Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas.
No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
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The Vietnam War | Part 1 | Vietnam and The War | Full Documentary
