Vietnam; A History

New York: The Viking Press, 1983. Book Club Edition. Hardcover. Good/Good. Bruno Bartley-Magnum (Jacket photograph). xiii, [1], 750, [2] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Chronology. Cast of Principal Characters, Notes on Sources. Index. Gift inscription not from author on fep. Embossed stamp of previous owner on fep. DJ has some wear, soiling, tears and chips. Stanley Abram Karnow (February 4, 1925 - January 27, 2013) was an American journalist and historian. He is best known for his writings on the Vietnam War. After serving with the United States Army Air Forces in the China Burma India Theater during World War II, he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in 1947; in 1947 and 1948 he attended the Sorbonne, and from 1948 to 1949 the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. He then began his career in journalism as Time correspondent in Paris in 1950. After covering Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (where he was North Africa bureau chief in 1958-59), he went to Asia, where he spent the most influential part of his career. He was chief correspondent for the 13-hour Vietnam: A Television series, which premiered on PBS in 1983; it won six Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, a George Polk Award and a DuPont-Columbia Award. The author's central theme is that America's leaders, prompted as much by domestic politics as by global ambitions, carried the United States into Southeast Asia with little regard for the realities of the region. This monumental narrative clarifies, analyzes, and demystifies the tragic ordeal of the Vietnam war. Free of ideological bias, profound in its understanding, and compassionate in its human portrayals, it is filled with fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with participants-French, American, Vietnamese, Chinese: diplomats, military commanders, high government officials, journalists, nurses, workers, and soldiers. Originally published a companion to the Emmy-winning PBS series, Karnow's defining book is a precursor to Ken Burns's ten-part forthcoming documentary series, The Vietnam War. Vietnam: A History puts events and decisions into such sharp focus that we come to understand - and make peace with - a convulsive epoch of our recent history. Derived from a Kirkus review: This companion to an upcoming, 13-part public television documentary on Vietnam is a readable digest. Karnow, a former Time/Life reporter, begins his story with the French colonization of Vietnam: a century-long process touched-off by a French bishop's vision of a Christian empire in Asia, and completed by creation of the Indochinese Union in 1887. By integrating colonized intellectuals into French culture, the French helped to create an educated intelligentsia--which, in turn, gave form to the Vietnamese nationalism. The story of that intelligentsia, and of Ho Chi Minh in particular, Karnow handles comfortably. Independence was spurious, he shows, under the French puppet emperor Bao Dai. American concern arose in the context of anti-communist containment: Karnow notes that George Kennan, originator of the concept, opposed a serious American commitment to mainland Asia. Nonetheless, Congress approved a $75 million Asian fund, and this became the first of $3 billion eventually spent to aid the French. On the 1954 Geneva accords that divided Vietnam, Karnow emphasizes Soviet and Chinese pressure on the Vietnamese communists to accept partition before a political solution. As he is at pains to point out, the resulting Diem regime in the South was thoroughly corrupt and hard-hearted. Buddhist monks immolated themselves in protest: Karnow's descriptions are harrowingly accurate. Diem's assassination is seen to have come about from a combination of American desire to unseat him and mixed signals over how far the perpetrators of the coup should go. The second half of the book is devoted to the 1965-75 decade--the period from Johnson's first, massive troop commitment and Saigon's fall. Here, the story is "objective" and mostly addresses decisions made and actions taken. Karnow's account is a good general map.