" A Viet Cong Memoir" is an intriguing historical account of the "other side" of the Vietnam War. Mr. Truong was a member of the National Liberation Front, as opposed to an actual military guerilla. The media always referred to the NLF as "the political arm of the Viet Cong". That always struck me as a dark, typical Vietnam type mystery. With "VCM", the NLF has a human face to go with the mystery. Right from the outset, any Vietnam vet as myself must take a story told by a VC with several grains of salt! Mr. Troung is beyond a doubt engaging in a bit of revisionist history, painting the indigenous (Southern) Vietnamese NLF in a fairer light than the more taciturn, hard core Communist Northern invaders. (...) A decent awareness of the conflict is needed to fully appreciate the book. With all these constraints aside, "VCM" rates as 5 star history. This should be required reading for serious students of the War, almost on a par with Bernard Fall's epic "Street Without Joy". The reasons are many: Troung is an excellent writer, both at once engagingly formal yet abidingly down to earth. Well educated, well connected and intelligent, he was involved with the NLF from the early 1950s-the French era of the War. The reader senses Troung's commitment to Ho Chi Minh's cause right from the time he meets "Uncle Ho" as a student in Paris. I believe that he believed in Ho's aphorisms- "liberty sweet liberty", "victory great victory", etc. Since Troung was not a jungle guerilla, the military side of the conflict is not emphasized here. Four major aspects of the War are mentioned; these are the book's strengths. 1) The reader will understand how the nation of South Vietnam ran and eventually disintegrated. The author paints a grim picture of a string of venal, petty and authoritative Saigon regimes. Troung came from an upper class Southern family and was well placed to report accurately.He even does time in a dank Saigon prison. Typical for Vietnam, his wife springs him with a bribe! 2) For a foreigner, the author had an excellent (!) grasp of the American political scene. The Vietnamese must have seen the U.S. letting the War slip away long before we did. 3) "VCM" is the only place I have read a fair, balanced and nuanced version of the back room deals at the 5-year debacle known as "The Paris Peace Talks". There was actually an ebb and flow, a system of sorts. Did Henry Kissinger blink? Was he outfoxed? Or, as the author seems to suggest, were he and Nixon just out of maneuvering room? 4) Critically, Troung takes pains to paint the South Vietnam oriented NLF as a kinder, gentler "third way" between the real bad guys (the Saigon regimes and their American cronies) and the hard core Marxists from Hanoi. The NLF wanted to set up a quasi-independent government in Saigon that would allow for the obvious differences between the 2 Vietnams. The infighting was intense and the "good guys", if that's what they really were, got stiffed good and hard. I chose to take Troung at his word; other readers may disagree. As a finale, "VCM" offers a rare, poignant, and touching chapter on the refugees known as the "boat people". I used to think that "Vietnam" consisted of that remote, little dusty Engineer camp I lived in for a year. Then I started reading other folk's far (!) more earthy accounts of RVN. 30 years after coming home, I continue to be ASTOUNDED by how many stories and sides there are to this foggy and mysterious place. "VCM" makes some sense out of the mystery. Then again, this being Vietnam, it may deepen it! Night always did fall quickly over there.

"A Viet Cong Memoir" by Truong Nhu Tang (Former Minister of Justice) offers some rare glimpses into the Vietnam War. I haven't finished reading the book just yet, but did scan the last chapter to read the punch line. Truong Nhu Tang, fed up with the mismanagement of Vietnam, he 'lost the faith' and became disavowed, and fled to Paris, France in 1978. Albert Pham Nooc Thao, a close friend of the author and fellow Communist, was Chief of Security for South Vietnams armed forces when Diem was in power. Albert worked hard to institute programs in Vietnam to anger the civilians and make them more prone to blame the government and join the NLF. He also bird dogged and acted as Diem's bloodhound to locate officers and officials who didn't support Diem. What a Trojan Horse! I wonder how many other high ranking RVN officials also were on the other side, using their positions to spy, bring charges of corruption on the RVN gov't, get rid of competent officers and officials by McCarthyism (accusing them of being communists) and cause general confusion?

I read this book when it was first published and have used it as a reference as both a student and teacher of the Vietnam Conflict for many years. Before having traveled to Vietnam, this was one of the first sources I'd encountered that put a human face on a former enemy that other texts and media reports had failed to provide. The text gives the reader an excellent view of one man's perspective in the National Liberation Front and shows its readers an outlook rarely seen from an American political sentiment. Of particular interest to me were the author's personal accounts of espionage during the war and the physical and emotional affect American fire power had on the Vietnamese combatants.

Fans of Haldeman's science fiction might be expecting an autobiographical novel when they find out that this is the story of a nineteen year old draftee who serves as a combat engineer in the Vietnam of 1968. That was the year Haldeman was a combat engineer there, and, like protagonist Spider, he was wounded then. But much of the novel doesn't seem specifically autobiographical though Haldeman's lean prose certainly uses his own experiences to recreate everything from the details of Vietnam's red soil, the contents of an engineer's demolition pack while on patrol, boobytraps, and the workings and non-workings of various weapons. Haldeman's dry, ironic prose has the right air of understatement for horrors that need no exaggeration. Science fiction fans will also be interested to see how the horrors that drove Spider psychotic are worked into the genre fiction he writes at his therapist's request.

Haldeman's most famous work, THE FOREVER WAR, was a metaphoric look at Vietnam. Here he shuns obliqueness to recreate an America at war. Using the novelistic techniques of Dos Passos, we learn about the persons and events of the time in documentary sections interspersed between accounts of Spider and his one time girlfriend, Beverly, whose journey skims the oceans of political dissent and counterculture existing on the homefront. Spider's troubles are only beginning when he's evacuated back home after being wounded in an ambush that wipes out most of his patrol. The entropic workings of bureaucracy and malfunctioning machinery coincide to strip him of home, family, friends, and gainful employment. Only rarely does coincidence -- and Haldeman's coincidences are always plausible -- work in his favor. One instance leads to the book's powerful ending.

Anyone seeking a compelling account of the year or any fan of Haldeman will want to read this novel.

My only complaint is that I would have liked to continue some of the characters' lives past 1968, but Haldeman is faithful to the title and ends his novel on Dec. 31, 1968.

This is a great novel, and harrowing journey inside the soul of 1968. If you were there then this is you, or someone you knew. If you weren't then prepare take a step back to a very strange time. Haldeman tells it straight on Vietnam. No Full Metal Jacket bull here, this is what we did. The writing is superb, and the story intense. This is the book I'm giving my kids when they are old enough, to help them understand what their old man thinks about.

While I love many of Haldeman's science fiction novels, I think 1968 is his best work. He dealt with his Vietnam experience in a very different way in The Forever War by presenting it in a futuristic setting. Here, he confronts it head on, and I think that's what makes 1968 even more powerful than The Forever War. It's amazing to me how little has changed as far as military life goes after reading this book. I was in the Marine Corps infantry in the early nineties, and the same lingo is still being used--like taking "pogey bait" out to the field with you, for example. Even though I, nor others of my generation, can imagine what the Vietname war was really like, I think Haldeman's novel is one of the best at giving us a taste of what it was like. But there's much more to 1968 than just a soldier's Vietnam experience. Much of the book takes place after the main character, Spider, returns home. He arrives a changed man, and the home he remembered has also changed. Haldeman doesn't give us a neat, clean resolution to the story, but what he does give us--a bitter taste of reality--seems so much more real than most novels. I also really enjoyed Tim O'Briens The Things They Carried, but 1968 was slightly more powerful for me. If you also like science fiction, you might enjoy some of the details in 1968--at one point Spider is reading Glory Road by Robert Heinlein, and at another point a soldier is reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. There's also a little bit of astronomy thrown in, if that's your thing. So personally, 1968 had a lot going for it in addition to its main motive. I think this is Haldeman's crowning acheivement, and I'd like to see it back in print. Also, I think Haldeman has at least one more good Vietnam novel in him.

While I found this absorbing and thoughtfully written biography of Vietnam anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg to be a bit overblown and pretentious at times, it is a masterfully written exploration of a complex and puzzling man, and provides the reader with a far-reaching biographical portrait that both neatly complements as well as providing a foil for Ellsberg's own recent autobiographical efforts in the best-selling work "Secrets". While "Secrets" concentrates first and foremost on the period of his life leading up to and including the debacle over the illicit release of the top-secret Pentagon papers to the press, Well's biography, "Wild Man" gives us a much more fully developed, balanced, and for the most part more objective look at the mercurial, narcissistic, and stunningly brilliant Ellsberg's life.

Ellsberg's direction in life was aggressively forged in the crucible of his aggressive and domineering mother's ambitions for him, such that he rose by dint of ability and hard effort to the heights of academic success early, graduating with a PhD in Economics from Harvard in the pre-Vietnam war era. Yet Ellsberg often did the unexpected, especially given his pedigree as an ambitious young Jewish-American intellectual; after college he volunteered for the Marine Corps, and served as an officer before going on to graduate school. After graduating from Harvard, he soon found himself recruited for the Rand Corporation, an elite Defense-Department funded think-tank and private preserve for intellectuals useful for the DOD bureaucracy. Sure enough, Ellsberg's controversial ideas and thoughtful repose gained him notice and a post within the government working for a highly placed Pentagon undersecretary.

This position placed him in the catbird seat in terms of his access to the opening sequences and related bureaucratic responses to the expanding conflict in Vietnam. Even as he lent his support to the Pentagon, Ellsberg became concerned about the use of body counts and other quantitative measures being employed as key indicators of our military situation and progress being made. Criticisms of the methodology fell on deaf ears however, and Ellsberg found himself more isolated and less influential than he had hoped he would be. Instead, he argued for a long and detailed survey "on the ground" in Vietnam, which he would volunteer to accomplish for himself, and which he felt confident would give a better, more accurate and realistic appraisal of American forces in the region. Over a eighteen month period, Ellsberg became convinced the war was being conducted all wrong, that the employment of such metrics as body counts, bomb tonnage, and areas secured were catastrophically misleading at best and profoundly delusional at worst.

The rest, as they say, was history, and it is useful to have both Ellsberg's recollections as well as those of an independent biographer in detailing just how and why all that cam e to transpire did so, for the devil is in the details of the historical record. At the same time, I was a bit offended by Well's recurring tale-spinning in terms of providing the reader with salacious material about Ellsberg's peripatetic and admittedly insistent womanizing. While there is no doubt that Ellsberg is no saint, I still fail to see why Wells felt it was so important to stress Ellsberg's ego excesses, his romantic escapades, or his apparent inability to stay the course on any particular intellectual path long enough to make a career of it has to do with his heart-wrenching decision to expose himself to a possible life behind bars in order to provide the American people with what he felt was critical information they had a right to know. Still, this is fascinating material, and any self-respecting sidewalk psychoanalyst like you and I are likely to enjoy a lot of his thoughtful ruminations about Ellsberg even as we know they are largely irrelevant to what happened and why. This is a worthwhile if somewhat flawed book. Enjoy!

In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg did a very brave and daring thing. The release of the Pentagon Papers was seen by others in my generation as one of the greatest acts of heroism imaginable. It is not surprising that Ellsberg -- the man -- is not the shining star that I thought he was in the summer of '71. Wells' book presents the man in amazing detail and we see him for the complex and perplexing person he is. Wells has done a great deal of research to write this book and it explodes off the page. Some may say that Ellsberg is a man for whom a biography is not deserved, but reading even the first chapter makes you realize just how central he is to the last 30 years of American history. After that, the book reads like a good novel.

Rarely have I read a biography that gave me so much insight into the life and personality of a major public figure. Wells is to be commended for a searching portrait of an amazingly complex personality. He clearly did his homework, conducting numerous interviews of Ellsberg himself and many of the living sources on him, including his family, friends, and colleagues.

No one can leave this book without a better appreciation of the complex influences that caused Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers; this was clearly an act of personal courage, but perhaps also motivated by some element of self-aggrandizement. (Then again, unless one takes an extremely simplistic view of history, whose motives are ever pure and unadulterated?) Wells would have us wonder if Ellsberg's career had continued on its upwards trajectory as a "supergenius" and insider at RAND, he would ever have released the Papers; I believe that diminishes Ellsberg's anti-war motivation far too much, however.

And the book does seem, if anything, rather personally biased against Ellsberg, whom the author seems to delight in describing at great length in not terribly attractive terms. Indeed, whenever Wells faces any ambiguity about his subject, he seems to consciously choose not to give Ellsberg the benefit of the doubt. Wells also does a great deal of overtly interjecting his own biases and parenthetical observations into the narrative, which is more than a little disconcerting. Finally, the choice of the title seems both unfortunate and somewhat sensationalistic.

But this is probably the fullest picture we will ever have of this man. Perhaps most useful of all is the book's detailed narrative of the copying and release of the Pentagon Papers and the Nixon Administration's almost comic attempt--comic if it weren't so frightening--to stop Ellsberg and his comrades at any cost. The ultimate irony, one can infer from Wells, is that while Ellsberg's release of the Papers had far less impact on ending the Vietnam War than he had hoped, the Nixon Administration's attempt to wreak vengeance on him and stop his antiwar activities probably led to Nixon's demise in the Watergate mess.

With all due respect to Peter Caldwell, I think this book has a lot of value for all Americans, including Vietnam veterans. There are some photos which are propaganda, but they are labelled as such and as the author explains they are part of a larger story. All wars come with propaganda, even our own present war in Afghanistan (remember the US Special Forces soldiers riding horses with the Northern Alliance guys?) The other photos in this handsome book are stunning, especially a very wide panorama of a terribly defoliated Ho Chi Minh Trail. Very touching portraits elsewhere as well as dramatic battle scenes, in addition to the brief histories of the Vietnamese war photographers (in their own words) make this a very valuable and important book. There is something inside for everyone, just dig a little deeper past your first reaction...

This is a tough book to sum up in a few words, since many people will use their background to judge it. If you felt we should have won the war, you will hate it. I was forced to serve in VietNam and I found the pictures very interesting. More than just the US era in VietNam, the photos go back to WWII. There are pictures of the Ho Chi Mih trail which vividly show the difficulty in shutting off that supply line. There are pictures of what the US now calls 'collateral damage' from the bombing in the North. There are some propaganga photos, but they are so stated. But far and away there are photos showing the everyday life of those involved in combat, and for that it is a very valuable book. It is a documentation from the other side. Considering how our drill instructors were wont to describe the other side as a bunch of pj'ed peasants, the quality of the photos is first rate. I can not begin to imagine the conditions under which many of the photos were taken, let alone survived to be developed. If you have an open mind about the war, you will enjoy the book. If you already have decided about the war and felt we were suppsoed to have won 'if only....', then I am sure there are lots of gung ho war movies and books for sale on Amazon.com that will better suit your mindset.

As a former Marine Corps combat photographer and recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Combat "V," (I Corps, Khe Sahn, Con Thein, Dong Ha, Vietnam), Peter Caldwell missed the point about the book. The book was not produced to glorify the NVA or the politics (which enough has been written), but simply to add another piece to a broad visual mozaic. Dr. Caldwell would certainly be hard pressed to attend the International Assn of Combat Photographers. Its membership include former Nazi photographers. In our world as combat photographers, then as now, our role was to document war, to present images however controversal or appealing, to the public. Sometimes these images can be bitter medicine for both sides...just like the images of My Lai.

Tim Page did an excellent job compiling a visual treasure of the North Vietnamese photographers. And as a former combat photographer, I was stunned to view their work. Other distinguished photographers and correspondents like Larry Burrows, Bernard Falls, Henry Huet, Sean Flynn, Dana Stone -- to name a few who I had the pleasure to meet and work with and all were killed in Southeast Asia, they would hold this book in high regard. After all, as combat correspondents we did not judge but observed. And that's what this book is all about.

SSgt. F. Lee
Combat Photographer ('66-67)

As a Vietnam Veteran (U.S. ARMY)I suffered the neglect, indifference and prejudice that all Veteran's did. I heard of other Vets who were making noise about it, and was curious enough to go see for myself what was going on at the Westwood VA, but I didn't participate. I was sprayed with Agent Orange when I was in Phan Thiet in 1969, and I got the wrong answers from the VA when (in 1979) I complained about symptoms of Agent Orange. I also had been told that my Medical Records were lost. Many of my experiences, I must confess I didn't understand, this book explains what was happening and Why! If you want to find the truth about your experiences, or are the family of a Vet who wants to understand, you need!!! to read this book. It's long and hard reading, but it will give you the truth, it will make you angry, nervous, and disgusted, but it will make you cry too for the Veterans who died after the War, At Home, Fighting the VA, Government and Chemical Companies.

As one of the participants in many of the demonstrations so eloquently described in Home to War, Gerry Nicosia has accurately portrayed historic events in a powerful movement that continues today. People of all ages and backgrounds will benefit from reading this book that recounts the Vietnam Veteran's "battles" at home, battles often worse than those they encountered on the field of war. Home to War describes the struggle that Vietnam Veterans went through on their own to obtain help in healing with herbicide exposure (Agent Orange)and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Gerry's description of some key players in this movement, such as Jack McCloskey, Ron Kovic and Ron Bitzer is right on target and helps the reader to better understand the struggle and the motivations behind the Vietnam Veteran's movement.

Senator Bob Kerry's recent disclosure of his participation in atrocities in Vietnam underscores the anguish and scars that Vietnam Veterans still live with more than 30 years after the end of the war.

While much has been written and portrayed in films about this unpopular war, this book is the most comprehensive in detailing the positive actions taken by returning veterans in what seemed to be an unending struggle to heal, in what can be called the greatest "self-help" movement of all time.

This book is a must for folks who want to understand why the USA lost and deserved to lose the Indochina War. Contrary to the myth of widespread civilian disrespect shown Vietnam-era veterans, it mainly came from supporters of the war when we said the war should be stopped, and did our part to try to stop it.

One of the best parts of Home To War is the story of the sneak attack by which Congressman Ray Roberts of Texas insured that Vietnam-era veterans were denied educational benefits equivalent to those provided World War II veterans.

I'm a Vietnam-era draftee/veteran, but I was lucky enough in 1964 to be shipped to Germany, because LBJ wasn't shipping us to Vietnam until after the election.

A few years after my discharge, I hooked up with Bay Area Veterans For Peace, led by Lee Thorn and the late Jack McCloskey. Their full-time devotion, persistence, and creativity were wonderful.

Home To War understandably focuses on Vietnam Veterans Against the War, its Winter Soldier Investigation, internal conflicts, and Beltway-based events, and readers should be aware that anti-war veterans' activities also took place in many local arenas. Nicosia should do a book -- or at least an additional chapter for the paperback edition -- on them.

For example, on Sunday November 11, 1971, several dozen anti-war vets -- including Thorn and McCloskey -- were driven with clubs and mace from the Veterans' Day Parade by the San Francisco Police Department Tactical Squad right in front of the City Hall reviewing stand. Did the Tac Squad go after us because we unfurled a black banner saying "Stop the Killing" in white letters?

Then-Mayor Joseph Alioto and then-Supervisor (now US Senator) Dianne Feinstein uttered no objection. Maybe they knew why the Tac Squad so flagrantly denied us our civil liberties. (We brought suit, but settled for medical expenses before our case went to trial.) Aren't civil liberties -- including the liberties of those prepared to do the fighting -- one of the reasons this society provides itself a military defense capability?

Worse incidents than this probably happened elsewhere. I hope that Nicosia will do a follow-up book that tells the story of grassroots anti-war veteran opposition.

This book literally changed my life. After reading this book I joined the ROTC program and was later commissioned an Ordnance Officer in the Army. 4 of the most valuable years of my life. I too visited the wall and located Tyrone Hisey's name, and feel an odd sense of reverence when I pass through Mansfield, OH. It would start to sound silly if I wrote much more about the power this book brings with it...but I will recommend another book, also written with professional assistance: "Fly for Your Life" by Robert Stanford Tuck with Larry Forrester. These books are the most powerful I have read on air war, or any other subject for that matter.

One of the greatest story's I have read in a long time. I laughed with him, and cried with him. By the end of the book I felt like I knew him personally, and if I saw him on the street I would say "Hi" as if we were old fiends and talk a while. side note: whoever gave the one star rating there... I think you may want to check the black wall for Tyrone Hysey, its there.

This book was recommended to me by a friend who served with Marvicsin. I read every book (fact and fiction) I can get my hands on concerning VietNam. This now rates as the finest I've read so far. The jargon is a reflection of the time, the war and the age of Maverick during his experience. The expressions he uses in a pinch are hilarious. He moves us through his military experience from young and dumb to the jaded thinking many vets developed in a war that nearly destroyed this country and did destroy many a good soldier in its wake. Also read-"We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" "Easy Target" and for novels on the subject, Colonel Leonard Scott wrote some fine ones.

David Lamb's "Vietnam, Now" provides a balanced perspective on modern Vietnam. Lamb first worked as a UPI reporter in South Vietnam in 1968. He returned in 1997 as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and lived in Hanoi with his wife for four years.

Other recent books about modern Vietnam (such as Robert Templer's "Shadows and Wind" and Henry Kamm's "Dragon Ascending") seem to put a negative spin on everything in Vietnam. However, in "Vietnam, Now" David Lamb chooses to take a more realistic and slightly optimistic view.

In his stories of life in Vietnam, he acknowledges the poverty of the people and corruption and stubbornness of the ruling old guard. However, he puts things in perspective.

As is the case in most books on Vietnam, a lot of stories are related to the American War: US veterans return to Vietnam for closure; North Vietnam war memorials are in good shape and the South Vietnam war memorials aren't; one son fought in the north and one in the south.

It's easy to see why some people have written negative reviews about this book. Some persons who have sacrificed and lost much in this country cannot acknowledge that anything good can exist in Vietnam while the communists are in charge.

Still, I recommend this book as a balanced perspective of modern Vietnam. If you do want another opinion of the country, I recommend Templer's "Shadows and Wind." Or, better yet, read both these books and then visit Vietnam the country and judge for yourself.

I think this book was really good. In this book Mr. Lamb showed the other side of the story about Vietnam. He showed what they think about the whole war, and what they think about American people. By Mr. Lamb's words, the book showed that Hanoi is a beautiful city in Vietnam, and that Vietnamese people are not mad at Americans for what happend, they say that they are people just like us. I do recommend this book, because it's nice to know what the other side thinks about the war.

I visited Vietnam with my wife in 1999 to adopt a daughter, and my wife visited there again last year to adopt our second daughter. Lamb's book accurately reflects most of what I have learned about Vietnam, including the amazing Vietnamese people, and the seeming disconnect between their daily lives and their government. I can't guarantee that every word is accurate; it is a complex country that is changing is many ways. But I do think you will learn more about Viet Nam from this book than from any other I have read. And it will prepare you well for the visit I hope you make someday.

This was, in many ways, a painful book to read. I was in elementary school at a school for missionary children in northern Japan when I read in my Weekly Reader that Nguyen Cao Ky had become the new prime minister of South Vietnam. I remember the news gave me a sense of hopefulness about the war, which we were kept informed of by the Far East Network (armed forces radio) and the Voice of America. I can also remember my feeling of confusion when I read that Theiu had replaced Ky as Vietnam's leader.

Without belaboring the point, I have long been frustrated by the American handling of the war, which, I believe developed out of our abdication in Korea. I don't want to spend time talking about that, because it is a tired and painful subject. Suffice it to say that this book confirmed my feelings, but added some new insight.

For example, this book adds some insight into the resentment that many Vietnamese nationals felt toward the French, whose colonialism was largely exploitive, and financed by the Americans in amounts that Everett Dirksen would call "Real Money." In addition to that, I did not know, until I read this book, that Westmoreland was fully informed of the North Vietnamese intention to stage a major invasion during Tet, but decided to keep this from the South Vietnamese army! This appalling mismanagement of the crisis produced a disastrous and completely unnecessary problem for the Cao Ky, but it was a challenge that the South Vietnamese met and overcame. While Tet had a demoralizing effect on the American public, it was actually a victory for South Vietnam, and a major defeat for the North Vietnamese.

The book also addresses some more familiar themes, such as the legendary ineptitude of McNamara, but the most poignant event in this book is Nguyen Cao Ky's impulsive decision to abdicate leadership in favor of Thieu. Nobody (including Nguyen Cao Ky himself) knows why he did this. Perhaps it really was a selfless act of a patriot who had no interest in promoting himself, and was just trying to do what was best for his country. Or, perhaps, he had become bored with the monotony of leadership, and decided to abandon his responsibility, just as he discarded his wives, one after another, when he got tired of them.

To his credit, Nguyen Cao Ky takes full responsibility for his fateful decision. And it would not be fair to say that he abandoned his country completely, because he was always ready to serve, and to lead when the chips were down. In that sense, we must give credit where credit is due, and call him a patriot. But this is small comfort for the painful realization that the war effort was doomed by his decision, although I am still not sure if I believe that it was more significant than the moral exhaustion of the American culture, which rendered the Americans all but impotent to save Vietnam.

Read this book. Nguyen Cao Ky is a very good storyteller, and a man of adventure who liked to live on the edge. You will almost certainly come away better informed about the first war the Americans lost. It is a sad story, but one which can have a certain measure of redeeming value if we are able to learn from our mistakes, and adapt to the very different place that east Asia has become.

This is a must-read book for those who want to understand that period of history when the United States
became mired in the Vietnamese quagmire. It is an easy read, despite some obvious spelling and grammatical errors,
and it is a unique look into the life of one of the most colorful players in the Byzantine game of Vietnamese politics
of that era.

Westerners, usually from the media but also others as well, often describe Nguyen Cao Ky as flamboyant,
when they are not using other words such as "swell-headed" or "shallow". He lives up to his reputation
in this book, and some of the stories that he tells, from his courtship of a young woman in the seaside town of Nha Trang
to his dealings with American generals and politicians, are indeed fascinating, even if some anecdotes are not
sufficiently detailed. The book is rather thin for this genre, but there is no presumption that it is scholarly,
or that it should be pored over by academicians in search of another explanation as to why the most powerful country in the world
could not overcome the Communist violent takeover of South Vietnam. Rather, it presents the point of view of a man
who at a young age came to lead his young nation in its darkest moments.

History is not kind to losers, and we in America have a tendency to think that the good guys usually win. But once
in a while, those who were defeated have a decent story to tell, and Ky is trying to do that with his book. He explains
the dilemma of Vietnamese patriots who wanted to fight against the French but could not swallow Communist
ideology, even at the cost of a twenty-year civil war. He is most clear-sighted when he points out that a good majority
of the South Vietnamese leadership consisted of French-trained men who took greed, religious, and regional rivalries to
extremes, even at the detriment of their struggling nation. He also asks some interesting questions that beg for answers from
those who had a hand in conducting the war in this country: at the start of the 1968 Tet offensive, why did US forces
not come to the help of their South Vietnamese allies until the morning after? Why did the US wait until 1968 to begin
giving more modern weapons to the same allies, while the Communist soldiers from the North had the best from Soviet and Chinese arsenals?

At the end of the book, Ky pleads for the Vietnamese diaspora, which numbers some 3 million people living outside of their
native country, to forgive and forget because the old Communist hard-liners in Hanoi are disappearing through natural attrition.
He wants the younger generations to go to Vietnam to help their counterparts inside the country rebuild it. But as a man who has
traveled widely throughout the world since the fall of Saigon, it is telling that Ky himself has not found the time to go back to the country of his birth.

How could it be anything else being written by one of the players. I think Cao Ky Nguyen confirmed many truths and it was important for that to come from a South Vietnamese leader. All that you need to do is keep in mind that he is trying to portray himself in a more favorable light than he deserves as he was just as politically immature as the rest of the inept leaders he comments on.

The American lessons from Vietnam in essence are the old sayings that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, and that if you want something done right do it yourself. When you put Nguyen's rationalizations in a more accurate perspective, he makes this clear.

Virgil Copeland's little conspiracy is turning into a nightmare. When he and his colleagues smuggled a few LOVs to Earth and used themselves as test subjects, Virgil never suspected that two of his friends would soon be dead, and he himself on the run from international law, on his way to the place where the mutant LOV colonies made landfall...

"A Limit of Vision" is confused. In the beginning it tries to be an edgy, sci-fi thriller, but soon slows down to a crawl and attempts to be a hard SF novel. The beginning features a moderately exciting escape sequence, a satellite crash, and a tidal wave, all in about fifty pages. Then the plot abruptly stops. All characters quickly and conveniently sort out into heroes and villains. The heroes suddenly become shallow and predictable, and what they're doing isn't very exciting: they farm the surviving LOVs in fish ponds, while the outside world tries to starve them out of their little reservation.

"Limit of Vision" treats its general subject matter - LOVs, an intelligent form of nanotechnology - in an extremely simplistic and straightforward manner, with no ambiguities. Despite having an incredible knack for mutation and problem-solving, they don't seem to pose any threat at all, and their "mind-enhancing" capabilities are hardly taken advantage of.

The book's tone is essentially dead. The narration moves quickly, but leaves no lasting impression. Characterization is lacking and follows predictable patterns: a blossoming romance between the male and female heroes (who would've thought!?); an enemy who becomes an ally, etc.

In a nutshell: lacking in both premise and execution.

I've read all of Linda Nagata's previous books. As a group, all of her previous books were enjoyable and reasonably well written. The characters were well described and the plots were interesting. The only complaint that I had was that the books really weren't that accessible because of the level of technical detail. While I enjoyed her "hard science" approach in her earlier books, I think it also kept her from getting a wider audience. From that perspective, I think that _Limit of Vision_ is an excellent attempt to broaden her audience while still remaining true to her original "hard science" roots. In addition, I think that with each book, Nagata's ability to create a thought provoking and challenging story has increased.

_Limit of Vision_ is set in the near future. A trio of scientists has been working on a project for a corporation basically exploring the feasibility of using organisms named LOVs (since they exist at the limit of human vision) for any practical purposes. Unfortunately, the scientists are hampered because all biotechnology is strictly regulated b/c of a horrible sounding accident caused by biotech gone awry. So, their LOV experiment actually lives on a space station in orbit around Earth. Before the LOVs were taken to the space station, the scientists stole some of them and implanted them on their foreheads.

This book is about the unexpected and unpredictable consequences of that action. Some of the questions that were raised in the book include: what defines consciousness? At what point does an organism stop being "animal" and start being something else? If an organism has consciousness, then do we have the right to just destroy it? And if we don't destroy it, does it pose a threat to the very things that define us as humans?

It's not a perfect book. It does leave some loose ends. It might even be missing some details throughout the book. But, that said, I absolutely had a GREAT time reading this book. It read almost like a thriller rather than some dry biotech story. In my mind, it encompassed many of the things that make sci-fi fun to read - a fast moving plot, lots of technology well used, a real concern about what might happen in the future. With a little stretching, I could absolutely see the vision Nagata created in _Limit of Vision_ as being a realistic possibility of what our future might look like. I was also really impressed by the strides that Nagata has made in creating realistic characters.

I also want to stress that Nagata is not some "new SF author" attempting to re-write Bear's _Blood Music_. First of all, she's been around for quite a while. She has several other books out there that are really well written, although in a much different style than _Limit of Vision_. Second, Nagata has written about nanotechnology in basically ALL of her earlier books. She's not attempting to re-write _Blood Music_, she's continuing in exploring a subject that she's been talking about for quite a while. In my opinion, even if you just look at the quality of the WRITING, _Limit of Vision_ is a far superior novel.

Possibly the decade's boldest voice in speculative fiction. Most writers hobble and contort their ideas to fit a preconceived plot or theme, but Nagata's mind appears to be wired exponentially.

The idea of brain-enhancing implants is hardly new, but until LIMIT OF VISION, we had never seen a full-throttle treatment. Nagata carries the idea to its logical conclusion, and while the fears of the technologically timid are duly noted, they're shown little mercy by the steamroller of progress. The future is coming on fast whether we want it or not, and the author's point rings true: it's way more fun to be _on_ the steamroller than under it.

Jack Todd had always assumed he would have to fight in the Vietnam War - all the men in his family had fought in WWII or Korea - except that he was getting more & more troubled by America's role in this one.

When Jack's oldest school friend returns from the jungle & urges him to dodge the draft, Jack stuffs down his disquiet & enters the army. He almost completes basic training when the love of his life does a long-distant rejection that sends him into a tailspin out of which he makes a fateful decision.

It has taken this writer 30 years to come to terms with the guilt & shame of his desertion, to break his silence & tell his controversial, important & profoundly American story. Perhaps becoming one of Canada's most successful journalists & remarkable writers has given him the perspective & strength to tell this most difficult of tales.

If you are at all interested in how a deserter made his decision & then went along with it - read this book!

If, on the other hand, you have an aversion to anyone who deserted during the Viet Nam War - you had better avoid it!

Not an "easy" read although this author does have a way with words & scoops you along for the ride of a lifetime. It's like seeing inside of a man's mind - how he saw the world then & what he did about it.

If you want to read a master storyteller - then grab a copy - it is one disturbingly powerful memoir of a strange & dangerous time.

On one hand, Jack Todd's story is a good one. He tells it well. While I respect (and was stirred) by his apparent honesty and bearing of some stupid decisions, I can't say I really liked him. His vagaries and depression and struggles were moving, but for some reason I wasn't entirely convinced of his desertion-on-moral grounds rationale. He justifies it with a series of rants that seem to ring a little hollow. I wish they didn't.

Although the war was wrong, I have a hard time accepting the notion that it's better to desert than to sell-out behind a desk in a comfortable army post in Germany.

Like the rest of us, Jack Todd is both courageous and cowardly. At times I felt as conflicted as he was . . . wanting to second-guess him. I felt sorry for him on one page and got angry at him the next.

One more thing: I felt a chapter was missing that explained how he got from low-rent writing to Montreal columnist.

Between 50,000 and 100,000 young men and women fled northward to Canada during the Vietnam War era. Yet, their voices have remained largely silent during the past three decades while a significant body of literature concerning the war experience has been evolving. Jack Todd has broken that silence with the publication of Desertion: In the Time of Vietnam, a moving memoir of a young man who followed his conscience to Canada in 1970 and waged his own private "war" as an exile in search of himself in an unknown land.

This intensely personal account follows Todd from childhood growing up in a small Nebraska town to a promising career at the Miami Herald to basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington. Six weeks into basic training, Todd begins to contemplate flight northward as the dehumanization of the military experience and a growing antiwar conviction convince him to reluctantly leave his country. The decision is not made without Todd's painful acknowledgement of loss ("family, country, career, the woman I love") and moral agonizing over leaving his homeland of 23 years ("It's not that I live in America or that I am American. We are indistinguishable. You grow up the way I did, you don't know where your country leaves off and you start."). Ambivalence haunts him ("One instant I'm leaning one way, the next moment I've swung in the opposite direction. It's like watching a compass needle waver back and froth, back and forth, until it settles on true north.") until the morning early in 1970 when a friend escorts him over the Canadian border to freedom, and there is no turning back.

The memoir concentrates primarily on Todd's life as an exile in a country "that is so much like home that every morning when you get up you have to remind yourself that this is not home, that home is now a place where you can no longer go." Starting in Vancouver he drifts from city to city, on the verge of homelessness much of the time, never staying in any one place long enough to make lasting relationships or discover the security of stability. "The only constant seems to be this endless flight, running on and on and getting no place at all," he writes.

Even as Todd attempts to create a new life in this strange territory, he struggles to write about the exile experience in prose that is both poetic and poignant. "I worry at the theme of exile," he writes, "the meaning of existence on what is, for me in this endless winter, the wrong side of a three thousand-mile border."

By the time the war ends in 1975 Todd feels as if he has been "fighting it one way or another" for the past eight years since becoming a "late convert to the antiwar movement in 1967." Although draft dodgers and deserters are granted amnesty after the war, "it is too late for me," writes a deeply regretful Todd, who earlier made the "absurd decision" to renounce his American citizenship during a period of deep disillusionment. "I have given up my country, my citizenship, my profession, my family, my belief in myself, my true love, everything but my life. For this I will be called a coward," he writes, "and perhaps the people who say that are right. I feel it's the hardest, bravest thing I ever did, but it's not for me to judge." Todd stops short of claiming to be a casualty of war, but does place himself among many others of his generation who were "very different people after we had passed through that fire."

Today Todd is an award-winning journalist for the Montreal Gazette who has "spent half a life on each side of the border" and feels both American and Canadian "in roughly equal parts," although the Wildcat Hills of Nebraska, where he returns to visit as an outsider, will always be considered home "even if there aren't too many people out here who would care to claim me."

Todd's compelling story has waited more than a quarter of a century to be told and undoubtedly took much courage to write. Desertion is a different kind of war story than many that are included in the Vietnam War literary canon, but it is nevertheless a war story. Breaking the silence of desertion, Todd has created a story of conscience, bravery, remorse, and ultimately, hope.