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THE VIETNAM WAR: Vietnamese and American Perspectives. Edited by Jayne S. Werner and Luu Doan Huynh. Armonk (New York): M.E. Sharpe. 1993. xxv, 300 pp. US$49.90, cloth. ISBN 1-56324-057-2.
This is a nineteen-chapter conference book, the product of a gathering at Columbia University, New York, November 16-17, 1990. It exhibits the expected strengths and weaknesses typical of its genre. Its chief strength is that we get the thoughts of some of our best specialists of the Vietnam War on particularistic aspects, brief essays from those too busy to write book-length studies on the subject. The chief weakness is a disparate overall quality, the lack of common theme or focus. This means an absence of what is most desired in historical writing--issue engagement, that is, confrontation by competing perceptions.
What made the conference singular, and heightens the importance of this work, was the presence of General Tran Van Tra, the legendary Viet Cong figure (technically, of the People's Army of Vietnam, nee the People's...