Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, Accessible Read
Review: "Once Upon a Distant War," is a highly readable history of the various journalists covering America's involvement in the early years (1961-63) of Vietnam. Prochnau has produced an intriguing popular history that has some flaws, but on the whole is quite a good book.The strength of the book is the fact that the material itself is so fascinating. Saigon, circa 1963, was an extremely exciting place for a foreign journalist. America had begun a huge build-up of forces in South Vietnam, the Diem regime was at its most oppressive, and the Vietcong were making huge gains in the rural countryside. Into this mix were thrown men like David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, and Malcolm Brown: relatively young, idealistic reporters who were determined to get the real story. But the US officials in South Vietnam were less than willing to assist the "green" correspondents, who they claimed were not "on the team." Lied to and rebuffed by the official channels, the reporters sought out contacts in the middle of the action: South Vietnamese officers and American field advisors like John Paul Vann who were willing to tell the ugly truth. The result was a constant battle between the Saigon correspondents and the Kennedy administration, other journalists, and even their own publishers. The only people who hated the journalists more were President Diem, his brother Nhu, and most vociferously, South Vietnam's First Lady, Madame Nhu. For two years the correspondents fought for every story and risked everything, including their lives, to get what they believed was the truth about Vietnam out to the American public. Prochnau is clearly in awe of his protagonists, but I think he still manages to give a fair account. The correspondents are not perfect: Sheehan goofs big time in his early account of My Tho, inflating the body count from 15 to 200. Halberstam was hugely influential, but as Prochnau makes clear, he was also incorrigible, uncompromising, and had a mean temper. One of the most important points that Prochnau stresses is that these men were not anti-war (certainly not at this early stage). Men like Halberstam were ardently anti-communist, and were only angry because the government was lying about a cause that mattered so much. But even the reporters' ostensible adversaries, such as Ambassador Nolting, are given full and fair treatment. (General Harkins is the one exception, but I've never read anything that suggested he was other than incompetent, blind optimist.) In addition to these detailed characterizations, Prochnau adds a wealth of anecdotes that give the book both humor and authenticity. Particularly interesting were the stories of Marguerite Higgins and her Machiavellian ways ("innocent as a cobra"), Sheehan's obsessive 16 year struggle to write "A Bright Shining Lie," and Halberstam mouthing off to high government officials ("Bull..., General! Why are you standing here telling our friend Clurman this bull...?"). My complaints are few. The first is about Prochnau's style: he is eminently readable and well suited for the material, but sometimes his tone becomes so informal it borders on cheesy ("Vietnam was not simply exotic. It was erotic. And narcotic.") My second complaint is that Prochnau glosses over many aspects of the war and does not give a very complete picture of the complex military situation. But his story is about the journalists, so maybe this is an unfair criticism. Then let me leave it as a caveat: do not read this book to gain an in-depth understanding of the political-military situation in South Vietnam, read it to learn about the tribulations of the journalists. In some ways, this book is better suited for people who already understand the history of the era and will not be confused by Prochnau's overly-simplistic (albeit justifiably so) account of the war. That said, this is still quite an entertaining look at some very interesting characters at a crucial juncture in modern American history.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, Accessible Read
Review: "Once Upon a Distant War," is a highly readable history of the various journalists covering America's involvement in the early years (1961-63) of Vietnam. Prochnau has produced an intriguing popular history that has some flaws, but on the whole is quite a good book. The strength of the book is the fact that the material itself is so fascinating. Saigon, circa 1963, was an extremely exciting place for a foreign journalist. America had begun a huge build-up of forces in South Vietnam, the Diem regime was at its most oppressive, and the Vietcong were making huge gains in the rural countryside. Into this mix were thrown men like David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, and Malcolm Brown: relatively young, idealistic reporters who were determined to get the real story. But the US officials in South Vietnam were less than willing to assist the "green" correspondents, who they claimed were not "on the team." Lied to and rebuffed by the official channels, the reporters sought out contacts in the middle of the action: South Vietnamese officers and American field advisors like John Paul Vann who were willing to tell the ugly truth. The result was a constant battle between the Saigon correspondents and the Kennedy administration, other journalists, and even their own publishers. The only people who hated the journalists more were President Diem, his brother Nhu, and most vociferously, South Vietnam's First Lady, Madame Nhu. For two years the correspondents fought for every story and risked everything, including their lives, to get what they believed was the truth about Vietnam out to the American public. Prochnau is clearly in awe of his protagonists, but I think he still manages to give a fair account. The correspondents are not perfect: Sheehan goofs big time in his early account of My Tho, inflating the body count from 15 to 200. Halberstam was hugely influential, but as Prochnau makes clear, he was also incorrigible, uncompromising, and had a mean temper. One of the most important points that Prochnau stresses is that these men were not anti-war (certainly not at this early stage). Men like Halberstam were ardently anti-communist, and were only angry because the government was lying about a cause that mattered so much. But even the reporters' ostensible adversaries, such as Ambassador Nolting, are given full and fair treatment. (General Harkins is the one exception, but I've never read anything that suggested he was other than incompetent, blind optimist.) In addition to these detailed characterizations, Prochnau adds a wealth of anecdotes that give the book both humor and authenticity. Particularly interesting were the stories of Marguerite Higgins and her Machiavellian ways ("innocent as a cobra"), Sheehan's obsessive 16 year struggle to write "A Bright Shining Lie," and Halberstam mouthing off to high government officials ("Bull..., General! Why are you standing here telling our friend Clurman this bull...?"). My complaints are few. The first is about Prochnau's style: he is eminently readable and well suited for the material, but sometimes his tone becomes so informal it borders on cheesy ("Vietnam was not simply exotic. It was erotic. And narcotic.") My second complaint is that Prochnau glosses over many aspects of the war and does not give a very complete picture of the complex military situation. But his story is about the journalists, so maybe this is an unfair criticism. Then let me leave it as a caveat: do not read this book to gain an in-depth understanding of the political-military situation in South Vietnam, read it to learn about the tribulations of the journalists. In some ways, this book is better suited for people who already understand the history of the era and will not be confused by Prochnau's overly-simplistic (albeit justifiably so) account of the war. That said, this is still quite an entertaining look at some very interesting characters at a crucial juncture in modern American history.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: All the President's Men in Vietnam so to speak. If you don't have that long to live, you should read "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan before this. In fact, that book is so good that you should read it before you eat your next meal or go to the bathroom. But this book is good enough that you should read it before your next haircut or before your next rent check is due. Very engrossing story of the early beat press in Vietnam, who ended up influencing the war very much to everyone's much chagrin.
Rating: 
Summary: A shadowy period pried open
Review: Behind Vietnam's shadowy fire-fights of 1961-1963 another kind of combat was taking place, one just as important to the war's outcome. It was a war of words and Prochnau's narrative follows this journalistic battle between a battery of triuth-seeking reporters (Halberstam, NY Times; Sheehan, UPI; Browne, API) and party-line higherups eager to conceal failures in the war's progress. All in all, it's a gripping account. Prochnau avoids comparing press attitudes from earlier wars to Vietnam, yet a comparison is very revealing. In Korea, cover-ups and propaganda pitches went largely unchallenged for two reasons. Most correspondants reporting from there had earlier reported from WWII, a popular patriotic war that had enlisted everyone on the same team. That team spirit carried over to Korea even when the clarities of the fight against Nazi-ism did not. However, by the early 60's, a new generation of correspondants - a young man's job according to Prochnau - had taken over. Steeped neither in team spirit nor in a tradition of placing press objectives below military ones, they were a new breed of journalists unimpressed with the briefings of big-brass officers. Contributing also to the rise of independent reportage was the scale of official deception, which expanded exponentially from Korea to Vietnam. The inflated body counts, Saigon's fishbowl of corruption, and a host of other calamities, all combined to override official deception much more effectively than anything from the early 1950's. Prochnau makes clear that these early reporters - including the trend-setting Homer Bigert - had no basic quarrel with US objectives in Vietnam. Like most observers, they believed intervention was necessary to preserve democracy against the communist menace. Rather, the disagreement was the perennial one over methods and not goals. Thus despite repeated appeals to `join the team', Halberstam and company realized early on that the well-armed Diem regime lacked the political wherewithal to contain the Viet Cong. And though their reporting angered higherups, they believed some kind of iconoclasm was needed to bring about a more effective anti-communist effort. In that spirit, they exposed sham victories when ARVN troops avoided battle but claimed victory, and they wrote about those American advisors dying in battle who weren't even officially there. The fact that government officials abetted these frauds testifies to the level of arrogance and self-deception driving Kennedy's policy at the time, an aspect of press coverage that Prochnau makes clear. The bottom line, however, is that at no time did these rebellious reporters question the fundamental rightness of America's interventionist role. Their faith remained uncritically liberal despite all the sound, fury, and second-guessing from both sides of the information battle. So in some kind of ironical fashion, a larger team spirit triumphed after all. Anyone interested in the early years of the Vietnam civil war should find this account vivid and revealing.
Rating: 
Summary: Neat Vignettes and Fact Update
Review: First, it must be said that this book shares many of the same strengths and weaknesses of Sheehan's A Bright, Shining Lie and Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. This is not coincidental, as Prochnau is clearly in their intellectual debt, if not totally immersed in hero-worship of his fellow journalists. So, the reader can expect great information on daily life in Vietnam during the early 60s, lots of fascinating details and anecdotes on the players who were somehow caught up in the early history of the U.S. involvement, and plenty of good war stories, some new, some re-told (but re-told well). This is a well-written book at the rhetorical level. The problem is at the deeper level of the author's thesis. In an ancient division of labour, Achilles fought, and Homer sang songs about Achilles' bravery. In our times, the Homers of the media can't help calling attention to themselves, and to their own hardships and their own bravery. No doubt they excelled the average bear in these respects, but a journalist certainly didn't face the same degree of danger and discomfort, day in day out, as the troopers they reported on. When Prochnau isn't busy making this silly point, he provides plenty of evidence about the journalist's daily routines in the bars and cafes of Saigon, their Vietnamese girlfriends, their embassy parties, etc. to make it clear that they didn't actually share the same conditions as the soldiers. But this gets lost in the over-arching glorification of the journalists. The book becomes truly absurd in this respect when it suggests that the Vietnam War might have taken a different course if David Halberstam hadn't been a war correspondent for 18 months in Vietnam in the early 60s. Even granted the influence of the press, what about Mal Browne, Horst Faas, and Peter Arnett, not to mention Neil Sheehan of UPI? Finally, this book shares with Sheehan's and Halberstam's books an out-and-out condemnation of the U.S. Army. All provide facts showing that LTCs and Colonels on down (even the occasional General) understood that a disaster was in the making (and explained it to the journalists). But nevertheless these authors all condemn the Army as an institution. They refuse to see that, as in Hitler's Wehrmacht, the most senior Generals were corrupted by their proximity to power, and used the command and control structure of the Army, and the ideals of loyalty and obedience, to steer the Army in the direction selected by their political masters (the plot against Hitler was essentially a plot of majors, LTCs and Colonels). In the 60s, the Joint Chiefs and particular Generals like Taylor and Harkins were guilty of responding to the immoral and cynical commands of their political masters when they directed the Army, a vast but essentially neutral tool, into an escalating war. Those Generals were responding to the directions of their political masters, and ignored their well-informed subordinates on the spot (and their own consciences?) in order to accomodate those directions from above. In the case of Vietnam, whether these authors like it or not, those masters were the Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and their advisers McNamara, et. al.
Rating:
Summary: Reads like a novel; as good as history gets.
Review: Not long after I finished the book, I read that Jerry Bruckheimer ("Armageddon" and all those big-bucks Hollywood action thrillers) is planning a major movie on it. Not surprising. Prochnau's "Once Upon a Distant War" reads like an adventure novel: a half dozen young war correspondents fighting everybody -- the U.S. govt, the South Vietnamese govt, their own colleagues in the media, even their bosses -- to get the early Vietnam story to the public. It's also first-rate history. You won't learn more about how we got into the mess in Vietnam -- and learn it with such page-turning narrative drama -- anywhere else. I don't know how I missed this the first time around. It's one of the best war books I've read and the best ever about reporters. Don't wait for the movie.
Rating:
Summary: Neat Vignettes and Fact Update
Review: The writing is good if you take it in short small segments, but I had a hard time getting the flow of the book. Also he seemed to spend time on people who weren't the "young war correspondents" and he seemed to spend time on things that happened outside the early Vietnam timeframe. [...]
Rating:
Summary: Novel History
Review: There are two books that I heartily recommend on the Vietnam War. One is "Vietnam: A Complete History" by Stanley Karnow, and the other is this book. William Prochnau tells the story of the early days of American involvement in South Vietnam in a way that makes the reader feel like he is reading a novel. Perhaps the only drawback to the book is that Prochnau is too thorough in covering the backgrounds of all concerned. The reader at times may feel that Prochnau goes off on a tangent in explaining the background of a new character to the story. But all in all this is an excellent book that tells the story of how America first started its fateful journey into a larger and deeper escalation into war in Vietnam.
Rating:
Summary: Journalists as unlikely heros
Review: This book is a great companion piece to the more popular "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan. Sheehan (along with David Halberstam and others) and his experiences in Vietnam during the advisor period (1962-64) are the subjects of this book. With it you gain perspective of how Sheehan and the others fought an incompotent and deceiptful American and South Vietnamese government establishment that fought efforts to get the truth (that the war was being lost) to the American people. The relationship between the young reporters and Lt. Colonel John Paul Vann (the subject odf Sheehan's book) also features prominently. The accounts are harrowing and sometimes enraging. This book serves as an effective reminder that the press are not always the bad guys.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Story for All Generations
Review: This book is a great read. A meticulously researched account of the lives of young reporters in Vietnam during the early years of American slide into Vietnam. He chronicles what now would be an inconceivable dilemma besetting young men trying to do the job of reporting the truth no one wanted to hear. This is a unique and gripping story populated with characters all well-known to us now. Highly recommend; especially indispensable for anyone planning to visit Vietnam; the places where the events unfold are all still there.
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