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Books > History > American history > From 1900
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Duong Van Mai Elliott's The
Sacred Willow illuminates recent Vietnamese history by weaving
together the stories of the lives of four generations of her
family. Beginning with her great-grandfather, who rose from rural
poverty to become an influential landowner, and continuing to the
present, Mai Elliott traces her family's journey through an era of
tumultuous change. She tells us of childhood hours in her
grandmother's silk shop, and of hiding while French troops torched
her village, watching while blossoms torn by fire from the trees
flutter "like hundreds of butterflies" overhead. She makes clear
the agonizing choices that split Vietnamese families: her eldest
sister left her staunchly anti-communist home to join the Viet
Minh, and spent months sleeping in jungle camps with her infant
son, fearing air raids by day and tigers by night. And she follows
several family members through the last, desperate hours of the
fall of Saigon-including one nephew who tried to escape by grabbing
the skid of a departing American helicopter. Based on family
papers, dozens of interviews, and a wealth of other research, this
is not only a memorable family saga but a record of how the
Vietnamese themselves have experienced their times.
BLOODY MAMA BLUES captures the war behind the war in Vietnam.
Corruption, black market dealings, prostitution, drugs, and easy
money proved seductive to countless American soldiers. Lieutenant
Mike Hardy expects to serve an honorable tour of duty as an
infantry officer. Instead, he is thrown into a cauldron of evil.
BLOODY MAMA BLUES explores the underside of the Vietnam experience,
and the irreparable damage suffered by a generation of young men
and women.
Between 1966 and 1973, while Australian troops were fighting in
Vietnam, some 300 conscripted teachers were quietly posted to Papua
New Guinea. Colloquially known as 'Chalkies', their task was to
raise the educational level of troops of the Pacific Islands
Regiment in what turned out to be critical years leading up to the
country's independence. Drawing on the recollections of more than
70 of those National Servicemen, Dr Darryl Dymock, a former
Chalkie, tells the story of how these young teachers responded to
the challenges of a life most of them never wanted or imagined for
themselves, in an exotic land on Australia's doorstep. It's a
unique tale of the good, the bad and the unexpected, told with
flair and insight against the background of political developments
of the day. 'An educational scheme which for magnitude, scope,
intensity and enlightenment is without parallel in military
history.' - Brigadier Ernest Gould
Developed specifically for the Vietnam War (and made famous by the
2004 presidential campaign), Swift Boats were versatile craft "big
enough to outrun anything they couldn't outfight" but too small to
handle even a moderate ocean chop, too loud to sneak up on anyone,
and too flimsy to withstand the mildest of rocket attacks. This
made more difficult an already tough mission: navigating coastal
waters for ships and sampans smuggling contraband to the Viet Cong,
disrupting enemy supply lines on the rivers and canals of the
Mekong Delta, and inserting SEALs behind enemy lines. The stories
in this book cover the Swift Boats' early years, which saw
search-and-inspect operations in Vietnam's coastal waters, and
their later years, when the Swift Boats' mission shifted to the
Mekong Delta's labyrinth of 3,000 miles of rivers, streams, and
canals. This is an intimate, exciting oral history of Swift Boats
at war in Vietnam.
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