Need a favor. I'm all of a sudden interested in listening to more audiobooks (I normally do podcasts, but lately I've been finding I finish all the podcasts for the week too quickly). I'd like a good history of the Vietnam war-- any recommendations for a good one-volume treatment? I see that Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History and Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie are both available in unabridged form on iTunes. Alternatively, A Rumor of War, Philip Caputo's memoir, is also available. Any advice or recommendations of other books I don't mention here are appreciated.
"About Face" by David Hackworth is an excellent book about the military. They are his memoirs as a career soldier through Korea and Vietnam and includes a blistering indictment of the early 70's Army. The sections on Vietnam are particularly good and he has a great writing style. He sadly passed away a few years ago. This is one of the best military books I have ever read. The guy was a true warrior. Highly recommended! Those ones you mentioned are pretty much the standard for that genre. Although "The Best and the Brightest" does a nice job of studying how the USA fell into the quagmire.
That's good advice. I've read The Things they Carried and In the Lake of the Woods; they were both excellent. I believe he has a few more novels about Vietnam.
I read the Karnow book 20 years ago or so, when it first came out. I don't remember much about it. Sorry.
Yeah, he's great isn't he? Going After Cacciatao is next on my list. He came and spoke to my students a few years ago when I had them read Things.
Fire in the Lake by Frances Fitzgerald. The first half is almost exclusively the Vietnamese experience during the war while the second half is the American experience in the country. Seemed more engaging than Karnow when I first read them. Halberstam's Best and the Brightest is fun, esp with the distance to allow you to separate the work from the cliches it has spawned. I also liked About Face.
Non-fiction, I don't know. But if you can read Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, you won't be disappointed and you will learn a lot about the day to day fighting of the war.
i second val1's recommendation of fire in the lake. it was written before the end of US involvement, and doesn't have a military emphasis but is still probably the most insightful analysis froma sociopolitical viewpoint. closer to the ground, michael herr's dispatches is the must-read which inspired coppola, kubrick and the clash among others.
Since Bowe Bergdahl's swap I've been wanting to read Going After Cacciato. Apparently 5 other people at the library had the same idea since I was 6th on the list two weeks ago.
The 13th Valley by John M. Del Vecchio is another decent read. Probably a little more first-hand-account type writing vs Tim Obrien's more cerebral approach, but still engrossing. Back in college one of my professors was putting together a masters level course with Vietnam literature as the theme and among Tim O'brien and a few others he was going to put some Del Vecchio in there. I was pumped as hell for that course but sadly the prospect of having to write 25-30 page papers for a few more years to get a degree that wouldn't get me a job pushed me in the opposite direction.