3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great but general overview of American involvment in Vietnam, August 12, 2006
This book is an entertaining read. It is short, fast paced, and gives a fantastic overview of how America became involved in the war.
It begins by explaining the French occupation of Indochina, and ends far after the American war there ended.
That being said, this book is VERY general, and goes into little detail about the HOWS and WHYS of the war. You can not read this book and know all there is to know. You need more than one source. This book should be combined with a video series called Vietnam: A Television History, and a couple of other books to get the full picture. For people seriously interested in the WHYS of American involvement, focus on the years JFK took office until about 1966, this will give you all of the reasons you need.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Review, April 28, 2004
Vietnam was an event in United States history that will forever live on. The Tragedy of Vietnam by Patrick Hearden is a wonderful piece of work that chronologically gives you an overview of the events that occurred in Vietnam, events prior to U.S. involvement and well into the involvement of the U.S in Vietnam. A plethora of books have been published on the U.S involvement in Vietnam. So to attack someone's interpretation of the events that occurred in Vietnam, which Hearden makes clear in the book, is in-appropriate. To top that off, if you are going to publicly express your opinion of someone's writing, than it would be in your best interest to use the spell check tool in your word processing suite, provide some hard fact evidence and cite examples from the book to justify your distaste in the writing.
From reading the review on Hearden's book on "Amazon.com" I was a little taken aback. Patrick Hearden is a professor of History at Purdue University where he teaches classes on American Diplomacy and specific courses on Vietnam. Obviously being a history scholar at a top notch school would give Hearden some credibility. I would like to think that he is a very credible author and that his book gives the reader a very clear picture of what happened in the many years we were involved in that little country in Asia.
The book is great in giving an overview of what my Diplomatic History professor calls a Greek Tragedy. It can be called a Greek Tragedy because the story is told in five acts and ends in tragedy. The five acts occur with each of the five presidents that played a role in the policies that determined the role of the U.S. in Vietnam. From Truman to Eisenhower, to Kennedy, to Johnson and finally with Nixon each president played a specific role in our involvement and Hearden does a great job of going into each presidency and specifically discussing each ones involvement and their policy decisions regarding Vietnam.
Hearden also gives good insight into the lives of people in Vietnam and how they felt about the situation at hand and the opinions of the American people as well. Now in expressing my opinion I would like to say I feel this book is of great value to anyone studying Vietnam, especially if they are studying the policy and the decisions surrounding the policies that were set forth by our presidents during the time of The Vietnam War. In addition there should be a disclaimer with all readings that say "historical interpretation because history is one huge interpretation. Sure there may have been people on hand with pen and paper to right down everything they saw and heard but you must keep in mind that with history there is always two or more sides to every story and that statement I believe to be fact. So it is the job of us as history students and the job of history professors to take history and utilize it to make decisions on what happened when and where but to know that it may not be one-hundred percent accurate. So I say that Hearden's book is a great companion to have for learning about Vietnam and the diplomacy involved in the U.S.'s stand in Vietnam.
*note to previous reviewer. It has been clearly noted by professors, students, academic professionals and historians that research on the internet is far from accurate in many cases. If you think that you can find everything you need to know on the internet than maybe you should stop by the information desk at your respective school of enrollment and ask for directions to the library.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
SUPER, September 25, 2009
This review is from: Tragedy of Vietnam, The (3rd Edition) (Paperback)
Book purchased for fraction of list price - brand new! Delivered in a reasonable amount of time! Thanks!
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