Browsing the Bookshelf

I have read dozens of American/Vietnam history books and apart from "Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (The New Cold War History) by Lien-Hang Nguyen, this is, by far, the most well researched, well documented (348 footnotes in one chapter alone), and factual work I have ever read. Nguyen's work is notable because she reveals what heretofore has been hidden by the North, and now been partially revealed - Le Duan and Le Duc Tho's criminal, iron fisted rule and failed military strategies which visited havoc on their own people as much as on those in the South. In addition, Nguyen details the North's three prong strategy with played the American political and cultural landscape like a fiddle. Neal Thompson, on the other hand, reveals how America marched headlong from Communist infiltration in its domestic affairs beginning in the 1920's and 1930's to both political parties in the 1940's and 1950's vying for election success by playing anti-Communist hardball without creating effective anti-Communist strategies. Worse yet, the political games they both played directly led to immeasurable human misery beyond even that of World War II. With precision and factual support Thompson obliterates all the foundational myths about the American Vietnam experience. None of the pillars of the current "orthodox narrative" withstands his research scalpel. This is, perhaps, the most lucid and important work written regarding America's Vietnam experience and the Cold War.

It has been 44 years since the Vietnam War ended; yet, the real discussion about it has just began. Why? Because now, the anti-war/anti-America/anti-South Vietnam no longer has the monopoly of the loud speaker. Further, with the open up of Russia and other communist archives, Hanoi's intoxication of victory, and US declassified materials, any thoughtful researcher can easily clear "the fog of war" in their mind and produce serious scholarly & thought provoking work. A great example of this is Neal Thompson's "Reckoning: Vietnam and America's Cold War Experience, 1945-1991". For the last 40 plus years, I have tried to read and learned as much as I could on what happened to Vietnam and how we, South Vietnam and America, "lost' it. America lost a war, and Vietnamese people lost a country. With terrible human costs. Worst, in the words of Hanoi's most famous writer and female volunteer to fight "America imperialists" Duong Thu Huong: "On April 30 1975, I sat on the sidewalk of a Saigon street, broke down and cried for my wasted youth and my generation because I realized that a barbaric regime had just won over a civilized one. How could that be?" We have since tried to find answers to that question: "how could that be?" Neal Thompson has provided very thoughtful answers to this. His is simply one of the most insightful and well research books on Vietnam I've ever read. It is so easy just to rehash long established conventional "wisdom". Many have done this and pat themselves on the back. Not Neal Thompson. Although I don't want to spoil it for you, but here is a hint. Regarding Vietnam, I used to say "Kennedy started it up, Johnson screwed it up, and Nixon gave it up." Having read Thompson's well analyzed and well documented work, having been living in Massachusetts for 30 plus years, and having gotten a degree from Harvard Kennedy School of Government, I now have to summarize the War as 'Kennedy started AND screwed it up". You will do yourself a huge favor by reading "Reckoning: Vietnam and America's Cold War Experience, 1945-1991"

This book by Neal Thompson should be on the required reading list of anyone who is interested in the truth about the Vietnam War. He puts the war into the context of the political and geo-strategic imperatives of the Cold War, providing clarity and honesty about the decisions made by our "leaders" from the close of WWII to the Fall of the Soviet Empire. As a Vietnam War veteran and distinguished lawyer who has studied the war for decades, Thompson brings his highly trained mind and logical approach to analyse the motivations of American political leaders and how those motivations resulted in disaster in South Vietnam. His book is well-researched, richly footnoted, reasoned and compelling, and all done in a highly readable and informative style. I was especially impressed with his analysis in Chapter 13, The "Unwinnable War," where he utterly destroys the orthodox mantra that there was no way to win the Vietnam War. He lays out in exquisite detail how there was a clear plan for winning the war by cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Southern Laos and how the pernicious and foolish adherence to the 1962 Geneva Accords on the Neutrality of Laos and Cambodia made this option impossible until it was too late to implement. He uses the words of the North Vietnamese to prove his argument. Thompson also poses a rather unique argument that had the Democratic Party won the 1968 presidential election, the war would have been prosecuted in a more aggressive and effective manner. I give Thompson's book my highest recommendation and I consider it one of the best books on the war I have read in the past forty years.