Tragedy of Vietnam, The (2nd Edition)

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Summary: Hearden's Book is a Tragedy
Review: Hearden's book is filled with facts and falacies and has no place in achedemia. He paints a portrait of predatory economics that totally neglects facts that must have been in play at the time, for example the concept of specialization and trade is made to sound like totalitarian colonialism. Did France exploit the uneducated Vietnamese? Proabably. Was it really that much different from exploitation felt by coal miners in the US, or the exploitation felt by any subcultural group in an growing economy? Proabaly not. There always is someone at the top of an economic ladder.

I have wandered from my review, sorry. The book is longwinded and repetative. If you are reading The Tragedy of Vietnam, make sure to remember it comes with a disclaimer located at the top of the book: "Historical Interpretations"--this is exactly what you are getting, and not a very accurate one. Hearden would have you hugging Ho Chi Minh, believing him never to have a violent or corrupt bone in his body. Geeze! Also, while Hearden never relented in piling on domineering ulterior motives of the US and France, he neglects to mention that the Khmer Rouge, once in charge, went on to kill 1.7 million people in an effort to cleanse the educated masses from the countryside.

I'm angry that my professor would have us read such a twisted view of events. What put me over the edge and made me want to write this review was when Hearden started ascribing US motives as based on a Trilateral economic model. I searched for better than half an hour on the WEB and could not find anything credible about his Trilateral assertions. Also, the only references to anything trilateral that you will find on the Internet seem to be crackpot based conspiracy theories. It's not like you can go to Trilateral.gov. Therefore, if Hearden has to stoop so low as to include this kind of speculation in his text, then it is not for me. I would like rate this book minus four stars.

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Rating:
Summary: A Real Review
Review: 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.