Customer Reviews

Vietnam Reader

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

 

 

... O'Nan has put together some of the best literature written by Americans about the Vietnam War since the late '60s. A quick look at the table of contents should put anyone's doubts to rest--especially since O'Nan has included a generous amount of space to Tim O'Brien, certainly the finest American writer about the Vietnam War. I had two problems with this book, besides the fact that this should be available in hardback. 1) O'Nan has failed to include anything from Thom Jones's book "The Pugilist at Rest"--an excellent writer, close on O'Brien's tail in terms of sheer storytelling. 2) This book includes nothing by Vietnamese writers--which I find a huge oversight...
This book does not pretend to be history...

The title says it all: FICTION and NON FICTION and if you read the intro to this book it says that O'Nan is a teacher of Vietnam LITERATURE not history. The selections in the book are examples of popular vietnam some are fiction. The picture of the little girl and the napalm bombing is one of the most famous pictures concerning the war.
I think this book is a great overview of vietnam era literature and reccommend it to anyone interested in vietnam lit. It also contains photos, poetry, song lyrics ( remember country joe and the fish?), and commentary on several movies. it is also seperated into categories like the first major wave of work that came towards the end of the war and the second major wave of work which can about a decade after the war which gives a nice chronological view.

I read this when it came out, and it pointed me toward buying and reading several works I probably wouldn't have otherwise. Of course, this work contains fiction and nonfiction, plus movie reviews, and song lyrics. I'm kind of confused why some earlier reviewers are upset. If there are some mistaken captions, so be it. The direction the book steers readers is ultimately what matters. It is a noble effort indeed to try and waken the consciousness of some readers who would otherwise be ignorant of the important works herein, and/or the Vietnam war era. If O'Nan's book helps the reading public to pick up other books on Vietnam, then he has succeeded admirably. The movie reviews are his own with supplementary comments by others. If readers have a problem with the content, direct that ire toward the individual authors, and not the compilator.
Buy the book, it's great!

Stewart O'Nan has managed to fashion a thematic collection of excerpts from many of the most significant literature to come out of the Vietnam War. These excerpts encourage a new generation to reasssess the war in the context of the nation's identity. O'Nan frames the excerpts within a chronology of when the works were first published. Also, O'Nan includes wonderful essays on the films that created our images of Vietnam. O'Nan's collection seems designed as a core textbook for any teacher who wants students to understand that the Vietnam War lives on in some of the best American writing. One drawback: only a few selections or perspectives from women writers or participants.

When I began writing about Vietnam, this was one of the first books I read. It steered me to read the entire books that intetested me. Whether or not there is agreement on some of the facts the author's cite, the book is only gathering words from other writers. It's hard to understand why that isn't understood. The book helped me immensely and I am thankful for it.

THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH THIS BOOK. AND ITS A BIG PROBLEM. IT'S ONLY IN PAPERBACK.

THIS IS A BOOK THAT SHOULD BE KEPT, READ, RE READ, AND THOUGHT ABOUT, FOR YEARS. IT SHOULD BE A REMINDER AND A TRIBUTE FOR AS LONG AS THE GENERATION THAT FOUGHT THE WAR, AND FOUGHT AGAINST IT, LIVES. TO DO THAT, IT SHOULD BE HARDBOUND.

I knew as soon as I got to page 2 of the intro that this would be a re-hash compilation of old B.S. war stories and half-baked myths masquerading as "Vietnam war history". And O'Nan is apparently still teaching this nonsense to unsuspecting college students! Take the oft-disproved LIES like "the average age of the combat soldier in Vietnam was 19". This doesn't square with the reality that the average age of those whose names are listed on The Wall and whose MOS is 11B (combat infantry) is 22.6 years of age. The average age of all Vietnam war fatalities was 23.1 years. Where does he come up with 19? Later we see those two famous (infamous) Vietnam photos with their DECEPTIVE captions. On page 439 "A South Vietnamese girl flees a U.S. napalm strike by Highway 1." Had O'Nan bothered to check his facts he'd discover that NO AMERICAN had any role whatsoever in this incident. South Vietnamese pilots flying South Vietnamese jets under the orders of South Vietnamese air controllers dropped the napalm on North Vietnamese Army positions in the village of Trang Bang when this picture was taken, June 8, 1972. Phan Thi Kim Phuc's injuries WERE NOT caused by any U.S. soldier. Later on page 691, we learn that "As Saigon falls, helicopters evacuate the U.S. embassy." More crap. The rooftop evacuation in the photo is from THE PITTMAN APARTMENTS in Saigon. Many of the works and authors cited in The Vietnam Reader were also critiqued in the book STOLEN VALOR. In Stolen Valor you will learn that many of the "Vets" writing these exciting stories of combat derring-do WEREN'T EVEN IN VIETNAM (if they were indeed in the service at all!) Do yourself a favor. If you want an honest, authoritative, objective, and well-documented expose' of thirty years of Vietnam war mis-information, read Stolen Valor instead.

This book is an unadulterated piece of CR--!! The author made no attempt to cross-check the material he put into it, and re-printed a large number of Vietnam War Myths, - the girl in the napalm strike, the 19 year old casualty, and many others, - as facts. If he is really teaching our youth the "history" of the Vietnam War using this tripe he should be called up before an academic review board and disciplined for sloppy research and distortion of the Nation's real effort in Southeast Asia.

Do yourself a favor and read a "real" book about the Vietnam War, one such as Geunter Lewy's "America in Vietnam", or Andrew Krepinevich's "The Army and Vietnam", if you are stuck with this one, read Burkett and Whitley's "Stolen Valor" in order to sort out the real from the fanciful.