Vietnam

A History

By: Stanley Karnow

Narrated by: Edward Holland

In this comprehensive history, Stanley Karnow demystifies the tragic ordeal of America's war in Vietnam. The book's central theme is that America's leaders, prompted as much by domestic politics as by global ambitions, carried the United States into Southeast Asia with little regard for the realities of the region. Karnow elucidates the decision-making process in Washington and Asia, and recounts the political and military events that occurred after the Americans arrived in Vietnam. Throughout, he focuses on people: those who shaped strategy and those who suffered, died, or survived as a result.

Panoramic in scope, and filled with fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with hundreds of participants on both sides, Vietnam: A History transcends the past and contains lessons relevant to the present and future.

©1997 WBGH Educational Foundation and Stanley Karnow (P)1998 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"This is history writing at its best." (Chicago Sun Times)
"[T]he best journalist writing on Asian affairs." (Newsweek)
"Even those of us who think we know something about [the Vietnam War] will read with fascination." (New York Times)

Excellent Narrator

First I should say that the narrator does an excellent job of evoking the speaking styles of various real personalities - LBJ, Nixon, Kissinger, etc. - without stooping to an imitation of their accents.

At one point the book quotes an American in 1990s Vietnam saying, "Vietnam is a country, not a war." Despite its title this book is a history of the US war in Vietnam, not the country itself. The author takes care to switch back and forth between different perspectives - the US government, the North Vietnamese leadership, US soldiers, and occasionally the Chinese and Soviet governments. But these are detours; the focus generally stays on the US presidents and their top advisors from start to finish. Not having been alive at the time, I felt that I learned quite a bit about the reasons for the US actions from start to finish. By claiming to stick to the perceptions of the White House, the author often avoids making his own interpretations. For example, he describes at least four occasions over several years when Robert McNamara visited Vietnam and each time reported that the US military was making no progress despite the enormous amount of money spent, ordinance expended, and Vietnamese killed. This is basically the central message of the book, but Karnow presents it not as his own view, but as that of successive White House cabinets. It's an approach with advantages and disadvantages, but it works overall.

I was irritated at first at how much time the "updated" first chapter of the book spends on discussing the first Gulf War - which the US had carried out just before this revised edition was published. Now I appreciate the out of date introduction: it shows that even the revised edition came out before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, so that the listener can be sure that the author didn't alter this Vietnam book to create parallels with the latest conflicts. Listening to this, I found the parallels going much further then I'd imagined possible.

Know History - or be doomed to repeat it

Karnow's book is a masterpiece. Sweeping in scope, it takes the listener from the earliest known history of Vietnam through colonialism's darkest times and up through the years immediately after the Vietnam War (with the United States). It is deeply detailed and draws intimate and moving portraits of many of the important people over the last 100 years - Vietnamese, American and French. Karnow's journalistic credentials serve his telling well. The interviews are amazingly revealing of motivations and character. One wonders if the Bush White House had only really understood this history if the United States would have made the serious foreign policy mistakes of the last 8 years. The reader does a superb job of capturing the passion of this story. Highly recommended.

Vietnam Revisited

As a 74 year old Vietnam veteran I read this book while taking a senior-level College course in history of the Vietnam War. This was our textbook. I was very pleased to see the number of history majors that were interested in our war.

A weak note to the 58,220 Americans KIA

This work is a weak tribute to the 58,220 Americans that were killed during the war in Southeast Asia. Mr. Karnow obviously does not care for the late and former President Nixon, but puts very little of the blame on LBJ for the disaster in VietNam.

To all of my brothers and sisters in arms who served in VietNam, I salute you.

An abundance of relavent history

This book gives you the history of Vietnam and what lead up to the war, it is important never to forget our past so we don’t make a mistake and repeat it.