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Vietnam....


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I'm taping it.  I hope it will be better than most other shows about Vietnam.  The story of the Vietnam War has been spun and re spun till many authors are simply using other authors as sources.

There have been a couple of modern books written on the subject with access to behind the scenes politics on both sides that might make one take a different look at the reasons for the war.  Try the one pictured below but be prepared for difficult and dry digging.

We will see what road Burns takes, new stuff or a rehash.

Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (The New Cold War History) by [Nguyen, Lien-Hang T.]

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8 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

I'm taping it.  I hope it will be better than most other shows about Vietnam.  The story of the Vietnam War has been spun and re spun till many authors are simply using other authors as sources.

There have been a couple of modern books written on the subject with access to behind the scenes politics on both sides that might make one take a different look at the reasons for the war.  Try the one pictured below but be prepared for difficult and dry digging.

We will see what road Burns takes, new stuff or a rehash.

Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (The New Cold War History) by [Nguyen, Lien-Hang T.]

I've just bought the digital copy on Google Books and will post my reaction in P&R when I've read it.

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I'll watch but later on a streaming device. I heard from people I used to work with that Harry Tran was interviewed for the show. Harry served in the South Vietnamese army during the war and moved to the US during the evacuation of Saigon. We worked together at the credit union. i don't know his full story, I've only heard parts of it, I know it wasn't pretty.

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On ‎18‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 3:32 PM, maddmaxx said:

I watched the first episode.  The facts are balanced so far as they go and they go farther than most previous historical shows have gone on Vietnam.  We'll see where the rest of the show goes.

Been reading film critic David Thomson's review in the London Review of Books.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n18/david-thomson/merely-an-empire

I'm still working my way through 'Hanoi's War'.

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I missed Ep 1.  I watched 2 and 3.  They were covering time periods of 62 thru 65.  It was informative.  I think back to when I was 7 to 10 years old.  I can't really remember when the war became real in my young life.  Probably for me I knew about it in 63 but looking at the production there are things I remember from 65 but not really much from before that.  I remember some of the SVN government unrest in 64 but just barely.  I would have told you that we sent Army ground troops in before 65 but I would have been wrong.  Last night they showed the transport ship that ferried in the first Army boots.  I have a former co-worker that was on that ship.  He told of the wide-eyed wonder and fright of being the first boots there (as opposed to the Marines guarding Da Nang).  They had no idea what they were walking into.  

Like Maxi said, it appears to be a well balanced piece.  The perspectives of the NVN soldiers are interesting.  I have a good friend that came over as an 8 year old after the war who's father was a SVN military officer and I worked with a former Cambodian jungle soldier.  Interesting perspectives all around. 

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1 hour ago, Caretaker said:

Been reading film critic David Thomson's review in the London Review   of Books.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n18/david-thomson/merely-an-empire

I'm still working my way through 'Hanoi's War'.

Good luck with Hanoi's War as it's even longer than the reviewers booklet on "go see it".  Why can't reviewers simply review instead of trying to become as important as the original.

Hanoi's War is the work of a true historian, full of lots of data points.  As such it's long, sometimes tedious and very dry.  It begs a second read (I'm currently on my third although I admit that I'm jumping back and forth this time between sections)  It is however a new look at a war that has in the past been colored by historians who had an agenda to push.  This author probably does too although it's not blatant.  If you make it through this book I'll also recommend another book, not because you want to read all about a kid learning to fly but because he grew up in the north and was part of a family that split, part remaining in the north and part moving to the south and what they thought of their decision and it's results.

A Vietnamese Fighter Pilot in an American War by [Tran, Hoi B.]

His story is very different from that of a friend of mine who grew up in South Vietnamese Aristocracy and became a fighter pilot.  My friend was the among the very last pilots to leave Vietnam in 75 and his best friend chose to drop a bomb on the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace on his way out of town to the north.  My friends lament was that his friend ended up as the head of North Vietam's Civil Air Service while he ended up as a lowly engineer in an American company in Florida.  His thoughts........you do what you have to do to survive.

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1 hour ago, maddmaxx said:

Good luck with Hanoi's War as it's even longer than the reviewers booklet on "go see it".  Why can't reviewers simply review instead of trying to become as important as the original.

Hanoi's War is the work of a true historian, full of lots of data points.  As such it's long, sometimes tedious and very dry.  It begs a second read (I'm currently on my third although I admit that I'm jumping back and forth this time between sections)  It is however a new look at a war that has in the past been colored by historians who had an agenda to push.  This author probably does too although it's not blatant.  If you make it through this book I'll also recommend another book, not because you want to read all about a kid learning to fly but because he grew up in the north and was part of a family that split, part remaining in the north and part moving to the south and what they thought of their decision and it's results.

A Vietnamese Fighter Pilot in an American War by [Tran, Hoi B.]

His story is very different from that of a friend of mine who grew up in South Vietnamese Aristocracy and became a fighter pilot.  My friend was the among the very last pilots to leave Vietnam in 75 and his best friend chose to drop a bomb on the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace on his way out of town to the north.  My friends lament was that his friend ended up as the head of North Vietam's Civil Air Service while he ended up as a lowly engineer in an American company in Florida.  His thoughts........you do what you have to do to survive.

I will probably finish it in about two weeks and doubt I will re-read it.

The Vietnam War only featured remotely in my consciousness growing up. I remember a friend who was surprised in the 70s visiting UCLA or some other college at the number of guys in wheelchairs etc. till he realised it was the legacy of the war. Later another friend, a Marxist, took a sabbatical in the '80s to live for a year in 'post-colonial' Vietnam ended up marrying a local from the North, the daughter of a police chief, something he later regretted. She tried to take him to the cleaners but thanks to the common sense of a judge here she didn't quite succeed. :lol:

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I'm watching it, but I get annoyed that so much of the coverage is about race relations, which is the core of every Ken Burns production. It certainly has its place - one of my best childhood friends who served in the Marines in Vietnam said, "The closer you got to the front, the Blacker it got."

But Burns beats the topic to death and only allows one point of view. If he did a series about chess, 50% of it would be complaining that white moves first.

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5 hours ago, MickinMD said:

I'm watching it, but I get annoyed that so much of the coverage is about race relations, which is the core of every Ken Burns production. It certainly has its place - one of my best childhood friends who served in the Marines in Vietnam said, "The closer you got to the front, the Blacker it got."

But Burns beats the topic to death and only allows one point of view. If he did a series about chess, 50% of it would be complaining that white moves first.

Anything about how yellower it got?

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12 hours ago, MickinMD said:

I'm watching it, but I get annoyed that so much of the coverage is about race relations, which is the core of every Ken Burns production. It certainly has its place - one of my best childhood friends who served in the Marines in Vietnam said, "The closer you got to the front, the Blacker it got."

But Burns beats the topic to death and only allows one point of view. If he did a series about chess, 50% of it would be complaining that white moves first.

I'm sorry, I'm not seeing what you are seeing.  I haven't seen an over reliance on a black storyline there.  Has he covered it - yes.  It was a major factor in the execution of that war.  This was the 60's!!  Black boys were going off to VN and white boys were going to college or Canada (by the percentages).  There was real anger in the streets about how unfair that was.  I came from a lily white community and, even as a youngster, I remember the issue.  

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