| Front Cover |
Book Details |
|
| Genre |
Non-Fiction |
| Subject |
Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Vietnam (Democratic Republic) |
| Publication Date |
1967 |
| Format |
Hardcover (8.7
mm)
|
| Publisher |
Harper & Row |
| Extras |
Dust Jacket; Dust Jacket Cover |
|
| Personal Details |
| Store |
Powell's City of Books |
| Purchase Price |
$4.95 |
| Acquire Date |
11/29/2020 |
| Condition |
Very Good/Very Good |
| Rating |
0 |
| Links |
Library of Congress
|
|
| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
DS557.A7 .S2 |
| Dewey |
959.7/04 |
| Edition |
[1st ed.] |
| Cover Price |
$4.95 |
| No. of Pages |
243 |
| First Edition |
Yes |
| Rare |
No |
|
| Notes/Review |
I found this book fascinating.
I tried to imagine a noted journalist being given access to the sorts of people, places, and information given to Salisbury in any other modern war. Can you picture Walter Winchell, A. J. Liebling, or Salisbury himself visiting Berlin in 1943 to inspect bomb damage, tour the countryside, and interviewing Hitler? Unimaginable.
Salisbury arrived in Hanoi at the end of 1966. By this time, US casualties in the war were only about a third of their ultimate total, and the US was still escalating troop levels and had hardly begun bombing the north. This was well before Nixon conspired with a foreign power to sabotage LBJ's efforts to negotiate a peace. This was a turning point in US history; people still mostly believed their government. The disaster of the war, compounded by Watergate, altered America for the worse. Imagine how things might have been different had Salisbury (and other reporters) been taken seriously.
Salisbury had quite a bit of experience reporting on war, and reporting on communists. I wouldn't call him an expert on bomb damage assessment, but he was a keen observer. And I don't think he was one to be taken in by Potemkin villages or things of that sort.
And, given how things turned out, I'm quite impressed by his observations. Most of this book is straightforward reportage. Only in the last few pages does he go about trying to predict the future. I understand that he wrote a number of articles about this trip that were published in the New York Times, so much (or all?) of the substance in the book was reported in the mass media at the time. It's too bad that his excellent reporting fell (mostly) on deaf ears.
What I found most interesting in this book was his analysis of the tension and competition between China and Russia and how the leaders in North Vietnam were not puppets of either power. There is also a nice description of the difference between the Liberation Front (which he calls Vietcong only once, I believe) and the North Vietnamese government. I'd always wondered why it was so important to the North Vietnamese that the NLF get seated in the peace negotiations. Now I know.
Good stuff. |
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