The American experience in Vietnam divided America as a nation and eroded its confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of its foreign policy. Yet America's understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, it has never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. This book paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against ... More

The American experience in Vietnam divided America as a nation and eroded its confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of its foreign policy. Yet America's understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, it has never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. This book paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, it takes the reader through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout this analysis, it allows the Vietnamese—both America's friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials, and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting America's old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, the book provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from its involvement in Vietnam.