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Essence of Asia

Recommend Reading

Mobile libraries are carried in the minibus when the group is at least seven people in size. Books include guide books, books about local history, and often some fiction written by local authors. Feel free to use these books at any time during the tour.  Books worth reading include:

Guide books

• Insight Guides – Vietnam - by Helen West (Editor) and Scott Rutherford (Editor). Paperback, fourth edition (2004). Our pick for the best insight into the history and culture of Vietnam and all of the major tourist attractions, together with great photos.
  

• The Rough Guide to Vietnam by Jan Dodd. Paperback, third edition (September 2006). A great guide book to go by – accurate and positive, in the case of Vietnam, better than Lonely Planet.

• World Food Vietnam – for people who live to eat, drink and travel - by Richard Sterling. Lonely Planet March 2000. A great little book for cuisine aficionados, or those who simply have an interest in the diverse flavours and aromas Vietnam offers. Gives an overview of the history and culture of Vietnamese cuisine, unravels some of the mysteries of what things are, describes food unique to different regions, passes on produce-buying tips and provides some great, easy recipes
  

History

• A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan. Picador. Captures the Vietnam/American war in its scale, passion and folly.

• Ho Chi Minh by William J. Duiker. Hardcover, September 2000. Hyperion. An intriguing tale of an intriguing man – the father of modern Vietnam.
  

• Once Upon A Distant War by William Prochnau. Prochnau tells the true story of David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan and Peter Arnett's early years in Vietnam. Written like a novel, Once Upon A Distant War tracks the US government's progressive enmeshment with the Vietnam debacle through the early forays of three of the journalistic legends the war produced.

• The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall. Fall, who himself was a casualty of the Vietnam War, provides the most thorough account of the 1954 battle that ended French colonialism in Vietnam and should have sent warnings to a US government becoming increasingly involved in Vietnam. Dien Bien Phu is considered one of the most important battles of the twentieth century and a classic tactical triumph by a poorly armed guerrilla force over a modern army of occupation.

• In Retrospect - The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam by Robert McNamara. McNamara, considered the chief architect of the US war in Vietnam, created a furore with this Mea Culpa in 1996. There is something unsatisfying about this read. Still, essential in making sense of how the cleverest of men led the world's greatest power into the most futile conflict.

• The Living and the Dead - Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War - Paul Hendrickson. Also on the McNamara theme this unusual biography presents a singularly unsympathetic account of the former Defense Secretary. Hendrickson threads his detailed biography through the lives of five diverse characters - a soldier, a protestor, a nurse, a Vietnamese and an artist who tried to murder McNamara in a spontaneous rage in 1972 - all of them profoundly effected by McNamara and his policies. An engrossing read and an unorthodox biography that is an excellent antidote to the numbing effects of In Retrospect.
  

• The Vietnam Reader Edited by Walter Capps. This is a superb collection of essays from the diverse US voices who led and were led into the Vietnam War as well those such as protestors and boat people who were deeply affected by the conflict. Capps book includes moving accounts of the moral dilemmas confronted by soldiers in the field, the havoc wrought on the lives of many of the returned servicemen, analysis of the lessons of the war from voices as diverse as US General Westmoreland to North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap and more. No book captures the depth, complexity and tragedy of the US Vietnam adventure so eloquently.
  

• Fire In The Lake by Frances FitzGerald. This is both the only major work on the Vietnam War written by a woman, and one of a handful of books that takes the time to study in depth the Vietnamese side of the conflict. Fitzgerald's work won her a Pulitzer in 1973 and makes a serious effort to probe the cultural underpinnings of the US failure in Vietnam - rather than the military failings.
  

• Vietnam – A History by Stanley Karnow. Penguin Books. Clarifies, analyses and demystifies the tragic ordeal of the Vietnam War – features fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews.
  

Contemporary

• Shadows and Wind by Robert Templer.
  Perhaps the only book available that probes contemporary Vietnamese society. Templer, a Hanoi based correspondent for AFP during the 1990s presents a well researched, well argued, provocative account of modern Vietnam.
  

• Catfish and Mandala: A 2 Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam - Andrew X. Pham. (Picador US)
  A great travelogue, and more – a captivating read. Vietnamese American Pham pedals through Mexico, the American West Coast, Japan and, when he finally feels ready, Vietnam. In the process, Pham delves into issues of belonging, home, family, relationships and culture. Catfish and Mandala provides a vivid, and personal, insight into the Vietnamese people. It’s definitely a “can’t put down”!
  

• The Trouble with Tigers – the rise and fall of South East Asia by Victor Mallet. Harper Collins Business.
  An interesting, readable account of the Asian economic crisis and its affects on the countries of South East Asia. Country-specific chapters provide an informative outline of pre and post-crisis development in this part of the world.
  

Fiction

• Earth and Water : Encounters in Viet Nam by Edith Shillue, Kevin Bowen. (University of Massachusetts Press, paperback, March 1998).

• Novel without a name by Thu Hng Dng and Duong Thu Huong. (Penguin, USA, reprint June 1996).
  A compelling novel about the horror and waste of the Vietnam War--from the North Vietnamese point of view.
  

• The Quiet American by Graham Greene. (First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd. 1955). A heartrending novel set in French colonial Vietnam in the 1950's. It follows the life of a British foreign correspondent reporting the progress of the war, an American working for an economic development organization, and the young Vietnamese woman they are both in love with.

• The Sorrow of War – a novel of North Vietnam by Bao Ninh, Frank Palmos (Editor), Phan Thanh Hao (Translator). Riverhead Books, reprint edition April 1996. The quasi-autobiographical account of a north Vietnamese soldier’s horrific memories of his involvement in the Vietnam/American War.
  

• Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong, Phan Huy Duong, Nina McPherson, Thu Huong Duong. Paperback Reprint edition (July 1994) Penguin USA. The first Vietnamese novel translated and published in North America, Paradise of the Blind is an interesting and revealing view of one Vietnamese family's life over the past forty years.
  

• After the Sorrow by Lady Borton. A wonderful story of an American Quaker woman who was on a peace mission her during the Vietnam War and returns several times after the war ended to interview Vietnamese women and understand the impact on their lives and the role they had to play in the war. It is a very moving and revealing insight into the role of the strong Vietnamese women in the war.