Geographically, historically and culturally Vietnam was profoundly influenced by Chinese culture due to more than 1,000 years under Chinese rule. Chinese influence was less important in Vietnam from 1884 to 1945 after the French occupied Cochinchina and established their protectorate in Tonkin and Annam. By the end of the 19th century almost all the Vietnamese resistance forces were defeated by the French. The Vietnamese revolutionaries looked for different paths of national liberation, an...

In Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) the author reflects Hos life, his good and bad relations with the Big Five, and his influence in the Third World countries and his place in the Vietnam history. Some interesting comparisons are seen in this book. The author writes it with all his historic impartiality in the hope of helping the future generations have the right knowledge of their country s historic events which are compared to the rain. Facing it people have different feelings. It is up to their ...

Fast-paced and intriguing, Mightier than the Sword is the fifth novel in international bestseller Jeffrey Archer’s the Clifton Chronicles. It moves towards the end of the 1960s, as the Cliftons and the Barringtons come up against sworn enemies and new foes . . .Following the explosion of an IRA bomb on board the Barrington’s flagship MV Buckingham, Emma Clifton must deal with the repercussions on her family’s shipping business. Meanwhile her old a...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEONE OF THE MOST ACCLAIMED WORKS OF HISTORY IN RECENT YEARSWinner of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians • Winner of the American Library in Paris Book Award • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • Finalist for the Cundill Prize in Historical LiteratureNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYTh...

Hailed as a "pithy and compelling account of an intensely relevant topic" (Kirkus Reviews), this wide-ranging volume offers a superb account of a key moment in modern U.S. and world history. Drawing upon the latest research in archives in China, Russia, and Vietnam, Mark Lawrence creates an extraordinary, panoramic view of all sides of the war. His narrative begins well before American forces set foot in Vietnam, delving into French colonialism's contribution to the 1945 Vietnamese revolut...

A Story of Vietnam is the first comprehensive and inclusive history of Vietnam written in English. It relates Vietnam's past from its origins to the present (2010). It gives as much emphasis to culture as to politics. I call it a story and not a history, because I do not want it to be the usual conventional textbook, overburdened with interminable references and footnotes.A Story of Vietnam can provide a substantial reading material to students who are interested in Asia. To the hy...

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Duong Van Mai Elliott's The Sacred Willow illuminates recent Vietnamese history by weaving together the stories of the lives of four generations of her family. Beginning with her great-grandfather, who rose from rural poverty to become an influential landowner, and continuing to the present, Mai Elliott traces her family's journey through an era of tumultuous change. She tells us of childhood hours in her grandmother's silk shop, and of hiding wh...

In this "essential" memoir, a former marine returns to Vietnam years later to try to make sense of the war (Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead).When William Broyles Jr. was drafted, he was a twenty-four-year-old student at Oxford University in England, hoping to avoid military service. During his physical exam, however, he realized that he couldn't let social class or education give him special privileges. He joined the marines, and soon commanded an infan...

In September 1962, when Martin Dockery landed in Saigon, he was a young, determined, idealistic U.S. Army first lieutenant convinced of America’s imminent victory in Vietnam. While most of the twelve thousand U.S. military advisors in-country at the time filled support positions in Saigon and other major cities, Dockery was one of a handful of advisors assigned to Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) combat units.For eight months Dockery lived and fought in the heart of the Mekon...

When he left war-ravaged Vietnam some thirty years ago, journalist David Lamb averred "I didn't care if I ever saw the wretched country again." But in 1997, he found himself living in Hanoi, in charge of the Los Angeles Times's first peacetime bureau and in the midst of a country on the move, as it progresses toward a free-market economy and divorces itself from the restrictive, isolationist policies established at the end of the war. This was a new country; in Vietnam, Now

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in P...

This is the incredible story of Bao Luong, Vietnam’s first female political prisoner. In 1927, when she was just 18, Bao Luong left her village home to join Ho Chi Minh’s Revolutionary Youth League and fight both for national independence and for women’s equality. A year later, she became embroiled in the Barbier Street murder, a crime in which unruly passion was mixed with revolutionary ardor. Weaving together Bao Luong’s own memoir with excerpts from newspaper articles, family gossip, an...