Genealogy Books - Vietnam: A History

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Summary: poorly researched and providing little insight into the war
Comment: This book has given an authority that its contents and research in no way deserves. A more
appopriate title would be "Vietnam: An American mythology" because facts be damned, Karnow is
dedicated to telling the story he wants to tell.

The first thing to understand is that
the majority of this book does not concern itself with America's "vietnam war" in terms of the large
conventional conflict between 1965 and 1975. Karnow spends the first 426 pages leading up to 1965.
What should be background in some sense consumes the book. And in terms of the book, the historical
subjects are where Karnow's knowledge is worst. As an example, Karnow describes Chinese, Roman and
19th century french methods of rule as essentially the same system. He fails to grasp that Vietnam
was under chinese rule for the majority of its history and that "nationalism" was the exception
rather than the rule.

His coverage of Ho Chi Minh essentially is the propoganda view of
the man himself. Karnow is incapable of looking beyond it or doing original research on his subject.
He gets the facts of what happened in 1945 completely wrong. He buy's into Ho's propoganda that the
Ho led a popular "revolution" against the Japanese. In reality, the surrendering Japanese in 1945
handed over power to a variety of local groups with the goal of causing the allies trouble. Contrary
to Karnow's poor research, there was no revolution in 1945 and there was no Viet Minh "government"
except on paper. The Viet Minh were so weak that they were pushed aside by the local french within a
few weeks without even support from the outside.

Karnow disposes of the French war in
Vietnam in around 30 pages. Following the mythology script, he focuses most of his attention on Dien
Bien Phu and ignores the complexity and details of the French phase. Its a superficial account at
best.

The Eisenhower and Kennedy chapters on Diem show off Karnow's basic ignorance of
the situation in Vietnam at that time. Rather than being about Vietnam, its more like Vietnam as
seen by Washington in those years. There is no attempt at understanding the actual politics of the
Diem era. The information on North Vietnam (or as Karnow strangely refers to them "the communists")
is completely lacking. The internal politics of North Vietnam are ignored as much as possible. />
As an example of Karnow's strange views: "In May 1959, the North Vietnamese leadership
created a unit called Group 559, its task to begin enlarging the tradtional communist infiltration
route, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, into the south." Group 559 in reality launched an invasion of Laos
putting a large part of the territory of that counry under Vietnamese rule which continues on even
now. Karnow's notion of a "traditional infiltration route" is completely false. North Vietnam
invaded Laos to flank the border of south vietnam and to use occupied Laos as a base for attacking
Vietnam.

As the book goes on, Karnow presents the traditional mythology about peaceful
neutral cambodia. What he fails to say is that Sihanouk was a dictator who murdered his opponents
and kept power by alternately allying himself with the left and the right. He also fails to mention
the well-known fact that rather than being neutral, Sihanouk (and cambodia) had signed a deal with
China were their rice crop would be bought at an inflated price in exchange for opening cambodian
ports to arms shipments and allowing Vietnamese bases on cambodian soil. The so-called "neutrality"
story that Karnow repeats is nonsense.

The last couple of hundred pages that cover the
war itself give a mixed up account that does a disservice to both the military and political history
of the war. He doesn't understand how the war was fought in Vietnam, he doesn't understand the
politics of any of the players and he is deeply attached to the mythology that vietnam was a
"gureilla war" fought against a local insurgency. He doesn't pick up on the fact that Vietnam was
largely a conventional war fought between large units with no front lines. Entire divisions of north
vietnam came south to fight american divisions in the field. The counterinsurgency mythology of
vietnam on the part of Karnow and many others is in no small part due to the fact that reporters
were stationed in Saigon and did day-trips out to counterinsurgency operations in the Saigon area.

And Karnow gets how the war ended completely wrong. The war ended because the entire
North Vietnamese army launched a conventional military invasion with tanks over the border. In the
end, the "invincible" insurgency in the countryside couldn't win anything.

Karnow is
also useless in terms of the legacy of the war. The book ends with the North Vietnamese celebrating
their victory in Saigon. He doesn't cover the disaster of the postwar era. He doesn't cover the
irony of "Imperial" Vietnam turning Laos and Cambodia into colonies within a few years of the war
except to note it as minimally as he can. While we get hundreds of pages of history on the front end
of the war, North Vietnam marching into Saigon is the end of history.

In summary this
is a bad book. It spends way too many pages on the wrong subjects, suffers from a lack of research,
depends too much on anicdotal views of history and presents an utterly misleading version of the
war.

For those who want a complete (but very dry) accurate military history of the
conflict, I suggest "The Rise and Fall of an American Army by Shelby Stanton." For those interested
in the complete story of Cambodia, I would suggest the first half of Pol Pot Anatomy of a Nightmare
by Philip Short.

Stanley Karnow is an appaulingly bad historian and I keep hoping for a
more accurate generalist history of the war to eclipse this book. But there still is nothing out
there.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Vietnam: A History
Comment: The late Stanley Karnow, while writing for American audiences, provides an authoritative history of
one of the most divided periods of our times. A must for any student or participant of the the
period.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The Best Research Book on Vietnam
Comment: This book was required reading for a class on the Vietnam War at the University of Nebraska.
Excellent research vehicle to understand the backround of Vietnam and its trials and tribulations.
Starts from the begining and takes you thru the American Vietnam War with an even keel look with a
middle of the road written word.

I still use it as a reference while writing my book
about the Vietnam War during 1968-69. This book should be read first, before any other Vietnam
book, to lay the ground work for all the other Vietnam books that follow.

LB 68-69

Customer Rating:

Summary: vietnam
Comment: this book is such a waste of time, it tells you only the point of view of one's man ego and his
denial of america's defeat by the north vietnamese. throughout the whole war,the u.s miltary only
rely on body counts for there victory ,hoping the north vietnamese would fear the u.s army and
surrender ,but in the end ,they were wrong ,the nva and viet cong were determine to fight to the
death.

face it,even though the u.s military won many battles,the united states lost the
war and retreated . the whole world is aware of this defeat but only some american citizen like this
author denies this.

many of the vc casualty are infact innocent civilians ,that the u.s
military has covered up by placing nva /vc uniforms and weapons on dead civilians ,then taking
photographic pictures of it.

the united states gain nothing from the war ,with 60,000 +
dead u.s soldiers ,thousands m.i.a (s) ,150,000 billion dollars down the drain ,over 100,000
seriously injured soldiers including amputees (missing legs,arms , body parts) ,and handicaps ,torn
the country apart during the 60's and 70's ,fail to stop communism,fail to protect south
vietnam,fail to stop an army that is 10 time smaller then u.s army,and fail to justified the war in
rightious context,basically the united states gave up and retreated.

the north
vietnamese suffered high casualty by fighting u.s army,australian army ,arvn army,south korean
army,and new zealand all by them self ,but fighting to regain there country for a better vietnam in
the future was a well justified reason to die just like anyother civil war (compared this to
american civil war casualties).

so one's man ego and his obsession of denial will not
change the world's view on why people should think who really won the war,everybody knows who won
this war,and media wasnt wrong at all.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Better Understanding Iraq
Comment: The revised copy of Karnow's classic is a historical masterpiece. While tedious at times, this work
gives one of the best insights into the nuances of power in the 20th century. Everyone lost in Viet
Nam and our government thought we had learned the lesson. We didn't as one can see by reading this
in parallel with some of the recent works on the politics underlying Iraq. No student of history
should miss the lessons of our time as outlined by Karnow and his interviews with most of the major
influences of this turbulent time.

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