Customer Reviews

Vietnam: An Illustrated History (Illustrated Histories (Hippocrene))

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you would like to undertake the daunting task of studying the history of the little-understood country of Vietnam, this is the place to begin. Professor Woods book is brief, but not deficient. It is readable, concise, and entertaining--characteristics not often found in history texts. Furthermore, the illustrations and maps make the narrative come alive. While the book is too short to answer all of the student's questions, it will give general guidelines to launch a more comprehensive study of Vietnam and its related countries in Asia. Woods is a terrific scholar with the unique ability to cut through the scholarly jargon and verbosity to give the reader a clear overall picture of what Vietnam's history is all about.

Before reading this book I knew that it would be an overview of the history of Vietnam with little details; and I assumed this book would be a good starting point for me to explore Vietnamese history, but it didn't do the job for me.

The manner in which the author presented the order of events were confusing and very difficult to follow as it seems like he was jumping back and forth between decades/centuries. The grammar is untasteful and rough to my ears in spots of the book. The pacing of the book seemed inconsistent - he presented a lot of details in the beginning and the middle, but the ending was so abrupt and rushed...it didn't have any substance like the rest of the book.

On another note, it seems as though there are not many Vietnamese history books that goes back in the 1800s (mostly starting with the Vietnam War) - so I appreciate the author for writing this book.

The previous reviewer made good points about this book, it's brief but gives the reader a general view about Vietnamese history. It's very organized and uses a classical essay style of writing. It's a scholarly book, quite obviously written as a textbook. And therein lies the problem.

There are many assumptions that the author makes and he chooses to present them as facts. They may be scholarly assumptions but presenting them as facts is still misleading and therefore, wrong.

If Mr. Woods had simply said "It can therefore be assumed that ...", I would have gone ahead and given his book the four stars.