Military Vietnam

When he was a student in Paris, Truong Nhu Tang met Ho Chi Minh. Later he fought in the Vietnamese jungle and emerged as one of the major figures in the "fight for liberation" - and one of the most determined adversaries of the United States. He became the Vietcong's Minister of Justice, but at the end of the war he fled the country in disillusionment and despair. He now lives in exile in Paris, the highest level official to have defected from Vietnam to the West. This is his candid, revealing, and unforgettable autobiography.

In Resister, Dancis not only gives listeners an insider's account of the antiwar and student protest movements of the ‘60s but also provides a rare look at the prison experiences of Vietnam-era draft resisters. Intertwining memory, reflection, and history, Dancis offers an engaging firsthand account of some of the era’s most iconic events. Along the way, Dancis also explores the relationship between the topical folk and rock music of the era and the political and cultural rebels who sought to change American society.

What if after decades there was still one more untold incredible Viet Nam war saga peppered with tightly-written notes from then young, not yet 20, and highly decorated leader of a small group of underground and Special Force combatants who searched and destroyed over 900 tunnels?

Through the lens of six remarkable people, some well-known, others obscure, best-selling historian John Boyko recounts Canada's often-overlooked involvement in that conflict as peacemaker, combatant, and provider of weapons and sanctuary. When Brigadier General Sherwood Lett arrived in Vietnam over a decade before American troops, he and the Canadians under his command risked their lives trying to enforce an unstable peace while questioning whether they were merely handmaidens to a new war.

This magisterial work, based on Frances FitzGerald's many years of research and travels, takes us inside the history of Vietnam - the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages, the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals and monks, the disruption created by French colonialism, and America's ill-fated intervention - and reveals the country as seen through Vietnamese eyes. Originally published in 1972, Fire in the Lake was the first history of Vietnam written by an American, and subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.

It's the year 1969. I was serving in the US Army with my brothers of First Platoon Company A 3/1 11th Bde Americal (23rd Infantry) Division. We were average American sons, fathers, husbands, or brothers who'd enlisted or been drafted from all over the United States and who'd all come from different backgrounds. We came together and formed a brotherhood that will last through time.

Frank Evans is a Navy sailor willing to do whatever is necessary to become a Marine. He's tough enough - and he has a general interested in his success. But success is measured in many ways. Frank finds out combat and the Marine Corps' definition of success change a man.

Robert Howard grew up in poverty in a small town in Alabama, with a strong sense of faith and determination. When he enlisted in the army at age seventeen, his Granny Callie’s words echoed in his head, and he pledged to follow them to the bitter end. In the most dire of combat experiences, Howard ran directly toward his opponents, sacrificing his body to protect others and to complete the mission above all else. Time and time again, he survived battles that should have claimed his life, suffering countless bullets, a spinal injury, and shrapnel and blast wounds.

When a soldier leaves for war, those left behind often wonder what their loved ones are experiencing. Letters home are always cheerful and vague - no sense in worrying the family. Then upon returning home, these young soldiers do not want to talk about their experiences. Family and friends allege they are now distant, changed, and not the same person they remember from several months earlier. What causes this? Although the backdrop for this novel is the Vietnam War, "cherries" exist in every war.

In early February of 1968, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive, Private First Class Gregory V. Short arrived in Vietnam as an 18-year-old US Marine. Amid all of the confusion and destruction, he began his tour of duty as an 81mm mortarman with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which was stationed at Con Thien near the DMZ.

In Legend, acclaimed best-selling author Eric Blehm takes as his canvas the Vietnam War as seen through a single mission that occurred on May 2, 1968. A 12-man Special Forces team had been covertly inserted into a small clearing in the jungles of neutral Cambodia - where US forces were forbidden to operate. Their objective, just miles over the Vietnam border, was to collect evidence that proved the North Vietnamese Army was using the Cambodian sanctuary as a major conduit for supplying troops and materiel to the south via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Gary Linderer volunteered for the Army, then volunteered for Airborne training. When he reached Vietnam in 1968, he was assigned to the famous "Screaming Eagles," the 101st Airborne Division. Once there, he volunteered for training and duty with F Company 58th Inf, the Long Range Patrol company that was "the Eyes of the Eagle." The Eyes of the Eagle is an accurate, exciting look at the recon soldier's war. There are none better.

John Burnam served two combat tours in the Vietnam War (1966, 1968), first as a US Army infantryman and then as a German shepherd scout-dog handler. John quickly learned the incredible advantages of having a dog to detect the sight, sound, and scent of hidden dangers. The dog was far superior to even the most experienced combat soldier at alerting on distant enemy noises and movement, finding hidden enemy caches of ammunition and supplies, searching base camps, and locating camouflaged tunnel entrances.

In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.

In War for the Hell of It, Cobleigh shares his perspectives in a deeply personal account of a fighter pilot's life, one filled with moral ambiguity and military absurdities offset by the undeniable thrill of flying a fighter plane. With well-crafted prose that puts you into his Phantom's cockpit, Cobleigh vividly recounts the unexplainable loss of his wingman, the useless missions he flew, the need to trust his reflexes, eyesight, aggressiveness, and his survival instincts in the heat of combat.

365 Days stands not only as a compelling account of this tragic conflict, but as a powerful antiwar statement. Nothing speaks so convincingly against the evils of war as the evils themselves. In this gripping account of the human cost of the Vietnam War, Ron Glasser offers an unparalleled description of the horror endured daily by those on the front lines.

In fall 1965, North Vietnam's high command smelled blood in the water. The South Vietnamese republic was on the verge of collapse, and Hanoi resolved to crush it once and for all. The communists set their sights on South Vietnam's strategically vital West-Central Highlands. Their first target was the American Special Forces camp at Plei Me, remote and isolated along the Cambodian border.

In a gripping, moment-by-moment narrative based on a wealth of recently declassified documents and in-depth interviews, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin tell the remarkable drama that unfolded over the final, heroic hours of the Vietnam War. This closing chapter of the war would become the largest-scale evacuation ever carried out, as improvised by a small unit of Marines, a vast fleet of helicopter pilots flying nonstop missions beyond regulation, and a Marine general who vowed to arrest any officer who ordered his choppers grounded while his men were still on the ground.

On October 19, 1965, American Special Forces in Vietnam came under attack at their camp at Plei Me. This marked the first major confrontation between the North Vietnamese and US armies during the war. Throughout six days of constant hostile fire, Captain Lanny Hunter sorted the seriously wounded from the dead and saved those comrades-in-arms he could. For his actions, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. In Exit Wounds, Hunter recalls his tour in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1965/66 at the bloody interface of medicine and combat.