Part travelogue, part history, and part reflective meditation on conflict and reconciliation, Sherry Buchanan's new book offers both a personal and historical exploration of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, highlighting the critical role women militia and soldiers played in defending the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War. Accompanied by two travelling companions, Buchanan winds her way from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in the south. Driving through the spectacular scenery of Vietnam and Laos, she encounters locations from the Truong Son mountains, the Phong Nha Caves, ancient citadels and Confucian temples to the Khmer Temple of Wat Phu at the western-most point of the Trail in Laos. Buchanan records her interactions-both scheduled and spontaneous-with those who experienced the Vietnam War firsthand, and these conversations with combatants and civilians provide new perspectives on the War. She listens to the women who defended the Trail roads against the greatest bombing campaign in modern times, walks through minefields with the demolition teams hunting for unexploded ordnance, and meets American veterans who have returned to Vietnam with an urge to "do something." Buchanan weaves informative, and often humorous, tales from her journey with excerpts from the accounts of others, situating the locations she visits in their historical and political context. On the Ho Chi Minh Trail brings together geography, history, and personal accounts to readdress the culture of indifference to the War, bringing to light the scale of the tragedy, its lasting legacies, and our memory of it.

Diary of A Young Artist is a beautiful reproduction of the diary notes and sketches of Vietnamese war artist Pham Thanh Tam, created in the Vietminh trenches while on the front line of the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu.

Tran Trung Tin painted in Hanoi during the 1960s and 70s, conveying the experience of the Vietnamese at war and the essence of human emotion in his images When he was 12, he joined the Resistance against the French who occupied Vietnam, devoting his youth to freeing his country only to be disappointed by the repression and misery that followed. Living in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, forbidden to express himself in words, he turned to painting to communicate the contradictions of his time.

"We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful"
--from an engraving on a Vietnam-era Zippo lighter
In 1965, journalist Morley Safer followed the United States Marines on a search and destroy mission into Cam Ne. When the Marines he accompanied reached the village, they ordered the civilians there to evacuate their homes--grass huts whose thatched roofs they set ablaze with Zippo lighters. Safer's report on the event soon aired on CBS and was among the first to paint a harrowing portrait of the War in Vietnam. LBJ responded to the segment furiously, accusing Safer of having "shat on the American flag." For the first time since World War II, American boys in uniform had been portrayed as murderers instead of liberators. Our perception of the war--and the Zippo lighter--would never be the same.
But as this stunning book attests, the Zippo was far more than an instrument of death and destruction. For the American soldiers who wielded them, they were a vital form of social protest as well. "Vietnam Zippos" showcases the engravings made by U.S. soldiers on their lighters during the height of the conflict, from 1965 to 1973. In a real-life version of the psychedelic war portrayed in Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," Sherry Buchanan tells the fascinating story of how the humble Zippo became a talisman and companion for American GIs during their tours of duty. Through a dazzling array of images, we see how Zippo lighters were used during the war, and we discover how they served as a canvas for both personal and political expression during the Age of Aquarius, engraved with etchings of peace signs and marijuana leaves and slogans steeped in all the rock lyrics, sound bites, combat slang, and antiwar mottos of the time.
Death from Above. Napalm Sticks to Kids. I Love You Mom, From a Lonely Paratrooper. The engravings gathered in this copiously illustrated volume are at once searing, caustic, and moving, running the full emotional spectrum with both sardonic reflections--I Love the Fucking Army and the Army Loves Fucking Me--and poignant maxims--When the Power of Love Overcomes the Love of Power, the World Will Know Peace. Part pop art and part military artifact, they collectively capture the large moods of the sixties and the darkest days of Vietnam--all through the world of the tiny Zippo.