Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns

For most Americans, writes veteran correspondent David Lamb, "Vietnam was a war, not a country"--even worse, it was sometimes merely "an adjective, usually with a negative connotation." The author was practically a cub reporter when he covered the war a generation ago; in Vietnam, Now, he returns to it, bringing with him a sharp analytic eye developed over the ensuing years. His key observations include the unexpected fact that "the Vietnamese liked Americans.... They had put the war behind them in a way that many Americans hadn't." This is not to say that things have gone swimmingly for the Vietnamese, especially in an economic sense: "Vietnam was like a racehorse whose jockey kept yanking on the reins rather than giving the animal its head to find full stride." And lingering still is the divide between North and South: "The officially articulated policy was always that all Vietnamese were equal; it's just that it didn't turn out that way. Ironically, the communist leadership [in Hanoi] found it easier to reach out to its former enemy in Washington than to its own brethren in the South." Vietnam, Now is an ideal book for anybody interested in Southeast Asia, perhaps especially veterans who wonder whatever happened to that place where they fought so hard for so long. --John Miller