There was another war in Vietnam, one that generally didn't make the headlines: the campaign to "win the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. Fought not with artillery and helicopters but with food, medicine and shelter for civilians devastated by the conflict, the effort was unprecedented in U.S. history, involving both military and civilian personnel working together in far-flung areas of the countryside. Part history, part memoir, this book chronicles an overlooked aspect of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, with a focus on the war victims and refugees most tragically affected by the carnage. The author recounts his two years "in-country" as an aid worker and describes how the humanitarian effort was conducted and why it failed.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Written on the front lines in Vietnam, "Dispatches "became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in 1977.
From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, "Dispatches "makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr's unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.
"Dispatches "is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

**The New York Times Bestseller**

**The book of the landmark documentary, The Vietnam War, by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick**

The definitive work on the Vietnam War, the conflict that came to define a generation, told from all sides by those who were there.

More than forty years after the Vietnam War ended, its legacy continues to fascinate, horrify and inform us. As the first war to be fought in front of TV cameras and beamed around the world, it has been immortalised on film and on the page, and forever changed the way we think about war.

Drawing on hundreds of brand new interviews, Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward have created the definitive work on Vietnam. It is the first book to show us the war from every perspective: from idealistic US Marines and the families they left behind to the Vietnamese civilians, both North and South, whose homeland was changed for ever; politicians, POWs and anti-war protesters; and the photographers and journalists who risked their lives to tell the truth. The book sends us into the grit and chaos of combat, while also expertly outlining the complex chain of political events that led America to Vietnam.

Beautifully written, this essential work tells the full story without taking sides and reminds us that there is no single truth in war. It is set to redefine our understanding of a brutal conflict, to launch provocative new debates and to shed fresh light on the price paid in ‘blood and bone’ by Vietnamese and Americans alike.