Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam

Rating:
Summary: Allowing a broad range of narrators to tell their truth
Review: Engelmann's Tears Before the Rain is a very well balanced oral history of the fall of South Vietnam. Airline attendants tell frightening stories of commercial jets being mobbed by desperate South Vietnamese trying to escape before the flood of Norht Vietnamese troops overtake Saigon. US Military officers, an ambassador, and CIA field chief give their perspectives from the American point of view. South Vietnamese army officers and soldiers give another account, one of betrayal by the United States. I can certainly understand the perspectives of the South Vietnamese. They feared for their lives and the lives of their families. The North Vietnamese forces controlled large portions of rural South Vietnam and they were ruthless to former South Vietnamese government officials and their families. This book is a very fast read, the narrative statements have been well edited into seemless paragraphs and any prompt questions by Engelmann have been removed. Our entry into the war was a terrible miscalculation. Our leaving the war was a human tragedy for all those South Vietnamese who had grown dependent on the United States. Engelmann's book puts a personal face on these tragic times. Well done and worth 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Tears of human tragedy. Joys of human triumph.
Review: I shed many tears while reading this beautifully written collection of stories about the fall of Saigon. They are stories of tragedy inflicted by human beings upon each other. They are stories of human spirits surviving, triumphing over the most horrible situations. You will never be able to forget the people, the stories once you read the book. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Tears of human tragedy. Joys of human triumph.
Review: I shed many tears while reading this beautifully written collection of stories about the fall of Saigon. They are stories of tragedy inflicted by human beings upon each other. They are stories of human spirits surviving, triumphing over the most horrible situations. You will never be able to forget the people, the stories once you read the book. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Just buy it.
Review: I've read a fair amount about Vietnam (Fire In the Lake, Karnow's Vietnam, Chickenhawk, etc.), all definitely worth reading, but this book ... the many stories and experiences, is the most memorable. It's rare to find a singular event remembered and retold from so many different perspectives. Well balanced and presented.

Rating:
Summary: Yes. Once again, it's a book you must read.
Review: Like a Gideon giving away bibles. I read and then gave away 4 copies of this book. I bought 10 more copies. I gave them away. I then bought 20 more copies and gave them away. Yes, this book is that good! You must experience it. Professor Englemann has produced a superb collection of first hand accounts by those who experienced the last 3 months of the Vietnam War. Please buy it and read it. I can't afford to buy it for everybody!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not surprising.
Review: This is a somewhat tedious book that does not really break any new ground in its descripion of people's experiences with the events surrounding the fall of South Vietnam. The tediousness in the book comes from the fact that there is so much similarity in the experiences related: South Vietnam was worth fighting for, America let us down, it was hard to get out of Saigon, Thai pirates preyed on boat people, Americans who'd shed sweat or blood in Vietnam were terribly disappointed with how things turned out, etc. I would have appreciated some more diversity in people's experience (as Studs Terkel did in "The Good War" where we read not only about 18 year old combat soldiers, but also WW II draft dodgers, etc.). I also found myself getting weary of reading that America let the South Vietnamese down. ...