Product Details
Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns

Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns
By David Lamb

List Price: CDN$ 20.50
Price: CDN$ 15.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $39. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 2 months
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca

22 new or used available from CDN$ 8.44

Average customer review:
(17 )

Product Description

When he left war-ravaged Vietnam some thirty years ago, journalist David Lamb averred "I didn't care if I ever saw the wretched country again." But in 1997, he found himself living in Hanoi, in charge of the Los Angeles Times's first peacetime bureau and in the midst of a country on the move, as it progresses toward a free-market economy and divorces itself from the restrictive, isolationist policies established at the end of the war. This was a new country; in Vietnam, Now, David Lamb brings it--and us--forward from its dark, distant past.

From the myriad personalities entwined in the dark, distant history of the war to those focused toward the future, Lamb reveals a rich and culturally diverse people as they share their memories of the country's past, and their hopes for a peacetime future. A portrait of a beautiful country and a remarkable, determined people, Vietnam, Now is a personal journey that will change the way we think of Vietnam, and perhaps the war as well.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #878992 in Books
  • Published on: 2003-06-12
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 288 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Amazon.com
For most Americans, writes veteran correspondent David Lamb, "Vietnam was a war, not a country"--even worse, it was sometimes merely "an adjective, usually with a negative connotation." The author was practically a cub reporter when he covered the war a generation ago; in Vietnam, Now, he returns to it, bringing with him a sharp analytic eye developed over the ensuing years. His key observations include the unexpected fact that "the Vietnamese liked Americans.... They had put the war behind them in a way that many Americans hadn't." This is not to say that things have gone swimmingly for the Vietnamese, especially in an economic sense: "Vietnam was like a racehorse whose jockey kept yanking on the reins rather than giving the animal its head to find full stride." And lingering still is the divide between North and South: "The officially articulated policy was always that all Vietnamese were equal; it's just that it didn't turn out that way. Ironically, the communist leadership [in Hanoi] found it easier to reach out to its former enemy in Washington than to its own brethren in the South." Vietnam, Now is an ideal book for anybody interested in Southeast Asia, perhaps especially veterans who wonder whatever happened to that place where they fought so hard for so long. --John Miller

Publishers Weekly, April 29, 2002.
"Part memoir, part historical narrative, part travelogue, part journalism, Lamb's worthy effort is a personality-driven look at Vietnam today."

People Magazine, May 27, 2002
"An eye-opening look at the other side . . . [Lamb's] eloquently told stories have an emotional resonance."