Vietnam - A History

Vietnam – A History  by Stanley Karnow

Most everyone in America agrees that the entire war in Vietnam was a very big mistake.  There are a lot of reasons why – some actual fact, some innuendo, some outright falsehoods.  Stanley Karnow’s excellent Pulitzer Prize narrative does an outstanding job giving the reader a very clear, yet thorough account of all of the comings and goings around the Asian country before, during, and even after the conflict.  This book was incredibly enlightening.  Much of it had to do with the fact that the author was actually there during the war, serving as a war correspondent.  He’s also interviewed many key figures several years after the conflict to try to add some perspective to many of the events that we now look back on in bewilderment and disgust.

It should first be pointed out that this entire book is not only about the actual war in Vietnam.  That event is the main player, however, yet Karnow realizes that a lot of background is needed before the reader can truly understand why things happened the way that they did.  In fact, I seemed to recall that the first (approximately) 300 pages of this book deals with what happened prior to the actual “war” that was fought by the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.  This might be a turnoff for some, but I found the whole background portion of this book incredibly helpful and highly interesting.

The first chapter deals with present day conditions (the book was written in the 1980s, then revised sometime in the 1990s).  The author tells us that even though the United States “lost” the war, conditions are still insufferable, and the country is, by no means a thriving nation.  Nobody really “won” this war.  We then go back – way back, to the beginning of recorded history including the French colonization during the 1800s.  It seems that the French decided to occupy this country because, well, they could.  Besides, if they didn’t, another powerful nation would do so anyway.  Sadly, that’s how countries did things back then.  Enter communist leader Ho Chi Minh who abhors this arrangement, and his followers decide to successfully fight the French during the 1950s, culminating with the fall of Dien Bien Phu.

Well, after the conclusion of World War II, the United States believed that any country wanting to become communist would be a threat to worldwide matters someday (Google “The Domino Theory”), so after the French fail, the U.S. slowly steps into the quagmire.  The Nationalist South Vietnamese are the “good guys”, so America’s goal is to build them up, support them and fight side by side until they can run the show themselves.  The problem is the South Vietnamese government is a joke.  Basically, the United States wanted South Vietnam to win the war more than the South Vietnamese did.  Right after their aloof leader, Ngo Dihn Diem is exiled and assassinated, President Kennedy is also assassinated.  Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson is essentially thrown into this mess, and doesn’t really want any part of this war (contrary to what Oliver Stone told you).  Johnson comes across as an incredibly bad leader.  He seems to think that by doing something silly like inviting Ho Chi Minh to his Texas ranch over a heaping plate of bar-b-que brisket will somehow fix the problem and smooth over relations.  

Well, Johnson and his team make a mess of things, and he essentially declines to run for re-election in 1968 because of his failure.  Enter Richard Nixon who doesn’t seem to do much better.  Even though Nixon does ultimately end the U.S. involvement and bring the boys back home, most agree that he did too little too late because he was trying to achieve “Peace with Honor”.  So the troops come home, Vietnam really never achieves “Peace with Honor” and the North Vietnamese conquer Saigon only a couple years later.  Fortunately, the new U.S. President, Gerald Ford, realizes that the war was a lost cause and has no intention of jumping back in to save the fledgling, uncooperative South Vietnam.

One of the most fascinating observations that I encountered while reading this book was the realization that, had Vietnam not happened, then it probably would have happened someplace else in some other war.  In other words, the United States was so convinced that they couldn’t lose a war, that they kept fighting in archaic, untested fashions over and over again.  At some point, they argued, the enemy simply had to capitulate.  Sadly, we sometimes don’t learn such lessons until after the fact.  It’s actually a good thing that whenever a potential global conflict now occurs that the U.S. will, or might, get involved in, that the question  always comes up “Will this be another Vietnam?”  So sadly, the war became a very painful, yet probably necessary, lesson for the United States to learn.

The hardest part about reading this book was the monosyllable Asian names of the main players.  To my Western mind, it could get very confusing to keep all of the names clear when you read Minh, Diem, Gap, Nu, Thuc, etc. etc.  Fortunately, the author provides a useful “cast of characters” at the end of the book that serves as a handy reference.  

I would have also liked to have read more about the common soldiers’ experiences.  Being that the author is a well known and respected journalist, we get plenty of insight (often from firsthand interviews) of many at the top, but much of the suffering and personal experiences of the soldiers on the battlefield doesn’t quite get as much attention as I would have liked.

I also thought the book ended rather abruptly.  We read about the choppers evacuating the American Embassy in 1975, then that’s it.  Perhaps some of the first chapter could have been told at the end as opposed to the beginning?  Minor complaints, however.  This might be the only book you’ll ever have to read about this truly sad time in America’s history.

Crescent Dawn

Crescent Dawn – by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler

Crescent Dawn is Clive Cussler’s 21^st Dirk Pitt novel.  It’s also the 21^st that I’ve read.  After reading so many of these books, I can’t help but wonder if my dissatisfaction in this one is because I’m getting tired of reading them, or if it’s because the quality has significantly dropped over time.  I’m guessing it’s probably a little bit of both.

I’ve mentioned (as have others) in many of my Clive Cussler reviews that it seems somewhat fishy that this author manages to write several different books every year, each with a different co-author.  You can’t help but wonder if the co-author is doing all of the actual writing, and Clive is just adding his name along with a colorful book jacket to help propel sales.  Lately, the Dirk Pitt books are “co-authored” with Clive’s son, (aptly named) Dirk.  This could be the reason why my enjoyment level has waned.  You never really appreciated how great some authors are until you read some books by some not-so-great authors.

There’s also the issue that Dirk Pitt has now “evolved” so to speak.  He’s no longer the young, handsome, dreamy bachelor that all women love, and all men want to befriend.  No, he’s married now to a U.S. Congresswoman, has some gray running through his black hair, and he also has two grown twins from a fling many years ago.  So, now, in addition to Dirk Pitt running around, we also get significant side snippets where we see Dirk Jr. pursuing baddies on his own, as well as twin sister Summer fighting some sort of injustice.  It really is a bit much.  Some of the supporting characters that we’ve grown to love in this series have now been pushed back further into the cast of supporting characters.  Oh, sure, they’re all here (Al, Rudi, St. Jules, and Admiral Sandecker), but they don’t get as much page time as before.  Maybe we now read about his son so much because Mr. Cussler feels we need a handsome, young carbon-copy running throughout the pages that rescues damsels in distress right before asking them to dine with him at an exotic restaurant just like dear old dad used to?

Side note:  In case you get lost between the two Dirk Pitts while reading, the original is referred to as “Pitt” and Junior is referred to as “Dirk”.  

Regardless of all of this, I simply didn’t find the story that interesting.  The formula is still here.  We start with a “prologue” of some catastrophic event that happened millennia ago, and we then fast-forward to present day where Pitt and company discover some sort of shipwreck that will eventually tie back to the introduction with a lot of incredible, historic revelations.  Throw in some bad guys that want Pitt and his cronies dead for whatever reason, and you have yourself a story that seems all too familiar.

What really seems to be missing is the sense of keen adventure and discovery.  This was always present in the earlier Cussler books, but we never seem to get this anymore.  I’ll spend about ten pages reading a chapter before I realized that Cussler could have replaced the entire chapter with one sentence that reads something like “Pitt  and Al rescue a woman  from a submersible”.  Or, “Pitt and Al rescue a scientist from a warehouse”.  I just really lost interest and stopped caring.

I’m not even sure I could do a good job summing up the plot here.  Something about Moslems and Christians trying to uncover some secrets while ensuring others stay buried.  That’s probably not entirely right, but does it really matter?

In conclusion, I must point out that I’ve read a couple of Cussler’s  Isaac Bell adventures (I forget that co-author.  There’s simply too many) and I really enjoyed those, so if you’re reading this review and you come away the same conclusion as myself, don’t give up just yet on anything with the name “Cussler” on it.  I also enjoyed some of the latter NUMA Files books (or “Kurt Austin” books, if you will).  

This one, however,  definitely made me yearn for the old days.

The Color Purple

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Color Purple is one of those books where the author doesn’t bother setting up the story for you.  As the book begins, we really have no idea of the background.  We don’t know where we are, who it is we’re reading about, nor any kind of backstory at all.  The author plows right into the tale – and we learn about the main character from a series of poorly written diary entries by young, uneducated Celie.

We eventually learn that Celie is a teen-aged African American girl living in rural Georgia around the 1920s.  Although slavery has been abolished for close to sixty years, you would never know that from reading this book.  At least not for African American women, that is.  As the story opens, she’s repeatedly raped by a cruel step father – even bearing a couple of children that are quickly given up for adoption. Her stepfather than gladly “gives her” away to an equally cruel man whose wife has recently died.  All this man really needs, though, is a woman to take care of his unruly children.  This man doesn’t really even want Celie.  He wants Celie’s little sister Nettie, but the father won’t part with Nettie.  She’s too pretty, and Celie is too “ugly”, so he unloads the older daughter.

So Celie essentially now lives a life of subjugation and servitude.  She doesn’t even know her husband’s name until well into the story (she refers to him as “Mr. ______”).  Sadly, Celie is such a mistreated, abused person, that she’s not even aware that she’s mistreated and abused.  After all, these circumstances have essentially been present her whole life.  She doesn’t even bat an eye, for instance, when Mr. _____ announces that he’s bringing his mistress home to live with them.

Strangely, over time it’s the mistress (Shug Avery) that slowly befriends Celie.  Little by little, Celie starts to find happiness in the small things and starts to discover what it’s like to be a loved human being.  Eventually, she’s reunited with many of her long lost family members and the story is very uplifting and encouraging.

One of the strong points about the writing of this book is that the author, Alice Walker, presents Celie’s story in a series of diary entries, yet records these entries as a poor, uneducated woman would write.  So we see tons of misspellings and grammatical errors.  So many that it can be a bit unnerving.  Sometimes you read about three or four pages before you realize the person that you thought was narrating the portion of the story was actually somebody else altogether.  Young Celie doesn’t know, sadly, how to use things such as quotation marks.  As the story progresses (and I want to say it goes on for about 20 years) the writing in the diaries becomes progressively better.  Celie, fortunately is becoming more educated and even manages to have a trade rather than be a slave to her husband and children.

As the book progresses, we meet a lot of characters.  There’s a lot of family and families of family, a lot of relationships, and a lot of names to keep track.  Combine this with Celie’s vernacular, and it can become very easy to get lost at times.  This was really a minor issue, as this book focuses one to feed on emotion and not nitpick such details.

Many people know this story, not because of the book, but because of the Steven Spielberg movie.  If you love the movie, you might be a tad disappointed in the book (I think I can say that about every Steven Spielberg movie).  One should be warned, for example, that much of the language here can be rather explicit, as are some of the sex scenes where young Celie is “discovering” herself.  Spielberg also has a habit of turning complex stories into situations where all bad is obliterated and only love prevails.  The book is a bit more complex then all of that.  Nothing against the movie – it’s a great movie, and one should never expect a movie to be based entirely on its literary source, it’s just that I can see where some would be jarred by some of the inconsistencies.

A good book, but also a sad book – even though the good guys “win” in the end.  It’s a sad commentary on how many lived, and one hopes that by reading this book, one can learn to just be a bit more compassionate about people and their situations.

Reagan - The Life

Reagan – The Life  by H.W. Brands

Rarely do I every buy new, full-price books.  There is such a plethora of great material to be purchased at a discount at so many different types of outlets and I tend to fall into the “frugal” category where reading is concerned.  I made an exception for this book, and I’m not really sure why.  Whatever the case, I’m very glad I did.  This was a wonderfully entertaining book.

It’s always a good sign when you read a book that is almost 800 pages, yet you feel like you wanted so much more upon completion.  Books of great length are not that uncommon when written about key figures in history.  Example: I just finished a fourth volume of President Lyndon Johnson (the fifth hasn’t been written yet), and the man doesn’t even become president until after about 3,000 pages.  So, yes, this book did give the impression of being somewhat succinct.

Fortunately, the parts detailing Reagan’s presidency fill up about 80% of the pages in this account.  Having said that, you could make the argument that this book is more of a biography of Reagan the President, as opposed to Reagan the man.  If you’re wanting to read about, for example, his career as an actor, his tenure as Governor of California, or his candidacy for President during the seventies, you’re likely to be severely disappointed.  The book spends just enough information on these events so we can learn about the character of the man.  It’s almost as if the author realizes that before we can appreciate and understand what type of president he was, he needs to give us a little background on some of the key events prior to 1980.

We learn he grew up poor with an alcoholic father, worked scale as a radio baseball announcer, became a very successful B movie actor, was a New Deal Democrat (he voted for FDR four times), was heavily involved in the actors union, was a successful governor, and hated communism.  I’ll say it again – he hated communism.  We also learned that he truly was a great communicator who loved the stage.  Although there are some that dismiss this characteristic as unimportant as a key political figure, I would strongly disagree.  Attitude and confidence can go a long way when being a leader, and Ronald Reagan had these attributes when he stepped into the office of president after a post-Watergate, “malaise” infected era of his country’s history.

Even though the majority of this book covers the presidency, there are still several examples where the reader wants more than what they are given.  All of the major events are covered, and the biggest ones do get a lot of detailed attention.  His greatest success (the Icelandic summit with Gorbechev) and his worst failure (Iran-Contra) get many chapters devoted to both.  But some things that were memorable (good and bad) seem to only warrant a paragraph or two at most - such as the James Watt fiasco.  I don’t ever remember reading the word “Reaganomics” even once, although there is some information about his efforts to get the economy back on track and changing the tax code.

I was also impressed by the author’s ability to not bog down the reader with governmental jargon.  He seems to be aware that most people don’t have a strong understanding of some key events  (example: most people, even back in 1983, couldn’t tell you the difference between the Contras and the Sandinistas when discussing Nicaragua).  You never feel overwhelmed with information and/or people.  He keeps the supporting cast manageable to where the uninformed reader doesn’t have to try to memorize and learn names they’ve never heard (this was a problem I had when I read The Reagan Diaries a few years ago).

We also learn (or are verified with what we already knew) that Reagan wasn’t a particularly good and/or emotional family man.  He and wife Nancy adored one and other, but we rarely read about anything when it comes to the Reagan children and what kind of relationship there was.  He could be somewhat distant when dealing with emotions, and apparently only let very few into his inner circle of feelings.

All in all most agree that he was a very successful president.  Oh, sure, many on the far left hated him, but no Commander in Chief has complete harmony amongst the subjects (See also FDR and JFK).  His jingoism could be too much for some, but most would argue that such characteristics were crucial during the time in the country’s history.  You also learn that the man truly wanted the best for America and he was never out to hurt anybody.  He truly believed that his job was to inspire confidence, encourage all to do their best, and protect the country from outside countries with conflicting ideologies.

Blameless? No.  Perfect? Never.  Most would argue that despite the drawbacks of some of the major events, the man brought the country back on track.  Not everyone will ever fully agree to that statement, but that’s just how life is.  Especially in the turbid world of politics.  

Wish there could have been another volume or two.