This book is a natural page-turner which delves into the rise of a new "warrior cult" in the U.S. beginning in the mid-70's and gaining momentum in the 80's. Explores the (sometimes dangerous) sociological implications of this fascination with automatic weapons, camouflage clothing, violence, and the "lone warrior", although the author's reliance on Jungian and Freudian interpretations of this phenomenon goes a bit overboard at times. Nonetheless this is a valuable study overall. The assertion that this phenomenon is fulfilling a valid psychological need in its adherents, and suggestions of alternate ways of fulfilling these needs that do not glorify violence, should prove to be provocative and hopefully useful in working toward a less violent society.

This is probably one of the best primer books for anyone interested in the sociological aspects of masculinity in America. It is an easy read with tons of examples from relatively recent media sources. It reads like a novel but has a lot more to say. Any one interested in violence in media should put this at the top of their to read list.

This book was recommended to me in a politics chat room. When my friend described its topic with "paintball" "guns" "war movies" and "politics", I knew I had to read it (i had an interest in all of these things).

The book starts off describing how "New Warriors" (men with a "warrior" mentality in Post-Vietnam America) see and treat women/children/family, how they are effected by consumer culture of war/paramiltary books and movies, view guns.. paintball.

Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, along with Ollie North, Rambo, Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris all embrace or help create the New War. Mass murderers, assassins, and mercenaries are influenced by it as well.

I'd like to see Gibson tackle the topic again. 5 years later, we've got an enormous computer/video game warrior culture, where hundreds of thousands of young men spend hours each day blasting each other to bits on the Internet.

This book was an enjoyable albeit teary insight into a love story that was caught up in the tragedy of the Vietnam war. Jami tells the story through many of Dick's heartfelt and honest letters to his wife Brenda. Although the book can get a little slow in the middle, hang it there for an amazing ending. It is truly unbelievable, shocking and terribly sad. Brenda was an extremely courageous woman and her story very remarkable.

This book is amazing. Keep the tissues on hand as you'll surely need them to get through this tragic tale.

If reading a book can bring tears to my eyes several times throughout reading it-I know it's a very good book-and this is an excellent book about Richard "Dick" Genest who lost his life in Vietnam and his widow Brenda Cavanaugh.

The author introduced the reader to both families as well as background on each. She wrote of how his father "based all his decisions about family matters and the family business solely on the return of his son" and that his mother "greeted every morning with thoughts of her son...embraced every night as one less they would be without him." His sister "counted the days until she could finally share all the growing up she had done during his absence."

She interviewed each family member and some of Dick's friends. She read the many written letters and listened to the tape recordings between Brenda and Dick. She pieced together all their lives to write this amazing story of love and devotion between two young people and the heartbreak that war brought to their entire families. She brought everything together magnificently!

Dick and Brenda's love grew from the first day they met in February 1965. From then on they were almost inseparable. Whenever they were apart they wrote, called or tape recorded messages to each other daily. They married in 1967. They vowed to stay together but the Vietnam War was about to separate them.

After being classified 1-A for the draft Dick joined the New Hampshire National Guard believing the Guard would never leave the state or at least not the country. But he was wrong.

Neither Dick nor Brenda believed in this undeclared war. He was at Fort Bragg undergoing field training in June 1968 when his son was born. He managed to get home for a week.

After learning his unit was in fact going to Vietnam he went back home for two weeks in August and spent countless hours holding Brenda and cradling the baby "then he was gone."

By mid-September 1968 Dick was in Vietnam. For the next year he wrote letters home daily telling Brenda how he felt about the war, how much he missed her and Dickie and how he couldn't wait to return home.

On 25 August 1969 he wrote his last letter home "I cannot wait to wrap my arms around you....You are my life." His unit was pulling out the next morning. Dick was going home. But it was not to be.

The Genest and Cavanuagh family helped Jami Janes with this book as a tribute to Dick Genest and to help Dickie learn more about his late father. It was also in many ways a healing tool for Brenda. This was indeed Brenda's story as much as it was Dick's and well worth the box of Kleenex to get through it.

M.McClear shows the vietnam war began in April of 1945 and lasted until april 1975 exactly 10,000 days. It shows our involvment with Ho Chi Minh in the remote jungles of southeast Asis and how we trained the Viet Minh, and How we promised Ho and Genereal Giap, that they would become the masters of thier own destinies. I shows how we betrayed Ho and allowed the french to return to Vietnam after WW2, and we supported the french effort, by providing them with 2 billion dollars worth of arms and money only to be later banished from France when they closed our post war bases. It shows a dissapointed Ho Chi Minh who quoted our own Declaration Of Indepedence The they took control of the north. It goes on to show our Blunders through out the fifties caused by the Macarthy era, and finnaly our defeat, It is the best and presice book I have ever read covering the Vietnam conflict. Thank You

Patrick J. Dunnigan Combat Medic, 199th

Light INfatry Brigade

When I first read this book I had little knowledge of the real politiks that were being played out and the reasons why.

However, on completion I came to the conclusion that the USA had missed a golden opportunity to secure Vietnam as a loyal ally amongst the Asian dominos.

The irony of the whole affair was reinforced in this most informative analysis. What if the US decided to recognise Hoh and his government and ignore the French. It must have come oh so close. While Hoh was a member of the Communist party he was ultimately a nationalist who openly recognised and respected the democratic ideals of the USA. Hoh's numerous (and most polite) written entreaties to Truman and his use of the American declaration of independence go further to support this assumption.

Billions of $ were invested by the US supporting the French in the French-Indochina war and then during their own conflict in Vietnam War. What a waste, what a cost...

I can't help but think what a difference these $ would've made if US govt in 1945 seized the opportunity and helped Hoh, Giap and co develop the country and build strong diplomatic relations in a very strategic part of Asia proper.

The book appealed to me for many reasons, but particularly because of Mike Maclear's impartial, dispassionate treatise of the subject.

Australia, like the US, is still coming to terms with its' own Vietnam War legacy. Many veterans are making the journey back to Vietnam to try to heal old wounds - I think that this book should be compuslory reading for all those who were there and for all those who see futility of war.

hmm... the title tells most of what's going to happen in the book... this is a suspenseful mystery... mostly recommended for mystery readers who like to solve new cases.... page-turner... must buy...

I just finished reading this book and absolutely loved it! Not only does it have just the right amount of mystery, suspense, and romance, but it also deeply touched my heart and helped me to give more of myself to the Lord. You will be blessed by her writing!

This book is great if you want to know how the airmobile division got started and was used, but it doesn't tell much about what it was like to be in the helicopters.

This book was just what i was expecting.J.D. & E.C. did an exceptional job of telling what it was like to be in Choppers in Nam. Many of our young men owe their lives to these brave men.

This is probably the definitive book on the reign of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Every serious student of the American involvement in Vietnam should find this background on how we got into that mess in the first place well worth reading. It describes Diem's background, character and personality and explains why not only Diem himself but also the vast cultural differences between the Americans and the Vietnamese made for an extremely difficult relationship.

It also has current value as the United States searches for leaders we can work with in parts of the world that are as new to intense American involvement as Vietnam was in the 1950s and 60s. A better understanding of what we did wrong in Vietnam may help us to avoid repeating those same mistakes. My personal opinion, reinforced by this book, is that if we have only a lame horse to bet on then we would be better off not betting in that particular race.

Catton's many examples show how out of touch the Ngo family was with the majority of the Vietnamese people. Diem was an arrogant, opinionated bachelor, a Catholic in a nation that was 93 percent Buddhist. One of his brothers was a Catholic bishop and Catton describes "the sectarian character of the Diem regime." Another brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, served as "Political Counselor"--and enforcer. Catton describes him as the regime's "Rastputin." Nhu's wife was probably the worst female government spokesman since Marie Antoinette. Madame Nhu referred to the suicides of burning bonzes as "barbecues." When I first arrived in Vietnam in 1966 she was still infamous as "The Dragon Lady."

The author expanded what was originally a graduate student paper about the Strategic Hamlet program in 1961-1963 into a doctoral dissertation that was more focused on Diem, his government, and their developing relationship with the Americans. With that background, we should expect excellent documentation and indeed the 203 pages of text are backed up by 59 pages of notes.

However, it is still possible for a nitpicker to find a few gaps. For example, his bibliography includes the U.S. Army's Military History Institute but not its Center of Military History. "The Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group" is mentioned three times but we are not told what it was. My local guide in Plieku in 1999 spoke excellent English because he had spent a year at Michigan State University. (The downside was that it earned him a year in jail after the communist takeover.) What was the Michigan connection? Faced with being dumped by his American allies "Diem won a dramatic reprieve with a military victory over the Binh Xuyen (a mafia type crime organization) at the end of April 1955." How could he win "a military victory" over a bunch of civilian gangsters?

Catton apparently speaks and reads Vietnamese, which undoubtedly provides advantages in research and opens doors for him that are not available to most American authors of books about Vietnam. Even though the English language literature on Vietnam is vast, some of the information he provides from the many referenced books and articles in Vietnamese may well be published here for the first time

Diem continually carped and complained about the type and amount of U.S. aid but resisted doing the things the Americans wanted in return. In Stilwell and the American Experience in China, Barbara Tuchman relates Stilwell's complaints about our government's failure to demand a quid pro quo from our Chinese allies in return for the aid we provided them. We had the same problem in Vietnam. The more we did for them the less the Vietnamese did for themselves. I read Stilwell in the spring of 1972 during my second tour as an advisor to a Vietnamese Army unit in the field. Our failure to demand, and Vietnamese failure to provide, a quid pro quo was still a problem nine years after Philip Catton described this exchange between Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and Diem in 1963:

"'Isn't there some one thing you may think of that is within your capabilities to do and that would favorably impress U.S. opinion[?]" Lodge asked finally. Diem gave the ambassador 'a blank look and changed the subject.'"

This is the first book that I have read about this period that really puts the Vietnamese side of this drama in center stage. I happened to serve in Vietnam during a couple of years while Diem's was President and had the advantage of speaking fairly fluent Vietnamese and have always thought that the 'Last Mandarin' image of Diem was quite off base. Catton actually manages to explain 'Personalism' , something that Diem himself had trouble doing to the people of Vietnam. The book does not attempt to whitewash any of Diem's many faults but does show Diem to actually be a modern nationalist who was determined to follow his own own agenda for nation building . It was this determination to follow his own agenda that was the major source of friction with his American backers. This book is a must read for any serious student of the war as it was the overthrow of Diem that really brought about the Americanization of the war.

From one Marine's experience comes a vivid retelling of what he experienced as a young U.S. Marine deployed into the early stages of the Vietnam War. It begins on aboard a troop ship sailing off the coast of South Vietnam. You can feel the tension and fear as these Marines are assembling to take the helicopter ride to shore to hunt and destroy the enemy. Makes one appreciate the U.S. Marine dedication to country and their focus on getting the job done. I thank the U.S. Marines for their service to our country. Thank you!

If you are interested in reading a REAL story about vietnam, this is it. My father is the man who wrote this book. Reading this book allowed me a great opportunity to learn about him...Come on, how many of you can figure out what makes the "old man" tick, especially if they were in that war? It was a very interesting and heartwarming experience to read this book. Many of you have had fathers that have been in this war. Sometimes after seeing all those Hollywood movies(i.e., Platoon, Hamburger Hill, need I go on?), you wonder how did he turn out so normal, and so good?? Let me tell you, he is the best man I know, and hope to always live up to. This is a remarkable story of his life and I believe it served a greater purpose for him to write it. To free his mind of the demons and to let us kids really reach into his heart and explore the great man that he is. Because, believe me, he is one humble god-loving man that will never realize the impact he has had on my life and many more...I am sure of that.READ IT

Upon reading this book for a class assignment, I was not very interested in the topic. However, after reading this informative masterpiece my interest in the vietnam era grew. I found this book to be very well written, and it fully shows the diversity in films made about the war.

A COMPLETE BOOK, giving full detail of the most popular films produced on the vietnam era. It also gives great detail on films almost forgotten or even unheard of. This is an important book in our history, it points out facts that might be missed otherwise.

A complete guide to an era of turmoil. Nobody realized the amount written on this subject. This book brings it all together and discusses the individual movies.

Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth by Frances Fitzgerald, Mary Cross (Photographer) is definitely another one to add to your South-east-Asia booklist. The book is divided into essentially two sections: the first includes the commentary; the second - the photography. The commentary discusses several "down-to-earth" issues and aspects of Vietnamese life and culture and manages to cut through their (only seemingly) simple fabric; the mix of subjects chosen is surprisingly (and refreshingly) esoteric (and authentic). The photography is good, although a bit on the grainy side. All in all - a recommended book for the South-east-Asian culture enthusiast!

Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth, photographs by Mary Cross and text by Frances FitzGerald, a book of surpassingly beautiful images by the distinguished American photographer and a thoughtful, radiantly intelligent text by the National Book Award-winning author and historian, bringing us the news, not entirely expected in some quarters, that since the devastation of the Vietnam War years, Vietnam has shifted to a market economy that has allowed for a "fascinating resurgence of traditional culture"; another work of surpassing beauty and ambition.

Joyce Carol Oates

Ever since serving in the Army from 1967-71 I have been curious about what Vietnam is really like. I was never sent over while in the army so all I know was what I read and heard. This book is informatively writen and beautifully photographed. This book is not about the war, it is about the country today. Extraordinary in every sense!