Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides

by Christian G. Appy

Hardcover, 2003

Status

Available

Call number

959.704

Collection

Publication

Viking Adult (2003), Edition: 1st, 608 pages

Description

Christian G. Appy's oral history of the Vietnam War probes the war's path through both the United States and Vietnam. These testimonies of 135 men and women span the entire history of the Vietnam conflict, from its murky origins in the 1940s to the chaotic fall of Saigon in 1975. Sometimes detached and reflective, often raw and emotional, they allow us to see and feel what this war meant to people literally on all sides -- Americans and Vietnamese, generals and grunts, policymakers and protesters, guerrillas and CIA operatives, pilots and doctors, artists and journalists, and a variety of ordinary citizens whose lives were swept up in a cataclysm that killed three million people.

User reviews

LibraryThing member hazzabamboo
I've very little to compare it to in the way of Vietnam history, but maybe I enjoyed it all the more for that.

I've always been fascinated by the subject - the greatest superpower in the world defeated, and war fading in its role as the ultimate arbiter of international power. It's easy to pass over
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the lengthy, complex history behind it though. Appy, by interviewing people on all sides and then structuring the results brilliantly, does justice to the shades of grey, the horror, the legacies and much more besides. The editorial work which precedes the chronologically ordered sections, and accompanies the themed subsections, is comprehensive and objective (most of the time) without distracting from the raw material of the interviews themselves.

Slightly overlong? Weighted in favour of American testimony? I don't believe either was avoidable. Superb.
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LibraryThing member m.gilbert
I found this work extremely informative, stimulating, and moving. Though it is 600 pages, I felt like it moved rather quickly. if there is any single book to read about the Vietnam war, this is it. It is one of the best non-fiction works I have ever read--and I've read quite a few.
LibraryThing member Willow1972
An amazing history read.

Awards

Massachusetts Book Award (Must-Read (Longlist) — Nonfiction — 2004)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2003

Physical description

608 p.; 6.52 inches

ISBN

067003214X / 9780670032143
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