My modus operandi when traveling through SE Asia was to take my time moving through the country and reading up as much as I could on these countries.
Here are some books that I liked about Vietnam. Vietnam: * A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679724141/> - The story of the Vietnam War illustrated through the life of one of the participants in it. * The Best and the Brightest<http://www.amazon.com/Best-Brightest-David-Halberstam/dp/0449908704/ref=pd_vtp_b_2>- A former Kennedy advisor/speech writer's take that even the best and the brightest make terrible mistakes with perfectly good intensions. * Street Without Joy: The French Debacle In Indochina<http://www.amazon.com/Street-Without-Joy-Indochina-Stackpole/dp/0811732363/ref=pd_vtp_b_4> - A very dry, academic take on the first indochinese war (leading to Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva accords in the 50's). * Vietnam: A History<http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-History-Stanley-Karnow/dp/0140265473/ref=pd_vtp_b_1>- An excellent, accessible history of the Vietnam War * Vietnam - A Television History<http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Television-History-Everett-Alvarez/dp/B0001WTWOC/ref=pd_vtp_b_21>- Not a book, but the DVD of an excellent TV series (based on the previous book in this list). * How We Won the War <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0916894010/> - The Vietnam war as seen from the brilliant general on the North Vietnamese side (Vo Nguyen Giap) * The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0140280219/> - We've all seen the photo of that naked, napalmed girl running towards the camera. Here is her story (and through it, the story of the photographer and the war). * Brother Enemy: The War After the War<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0020493614/>- After the Americans left in 1975, another war broke out in Indochina between former allies perceived as a homogenous communist dominoes by the planners in the the Pentagon. Nayan Chanda was one of the few non-Western correspondents left in Vietnam who wrote extensively about the goings on for the Far Eastern Economic Review (RIP!). * The Pentagon Papers <http://www.amazon.com/dp/007028380X/> - Reading up on what the military planners in the US knew as they were getting mired more and more into the war is fascinating to read. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers were the wikileaks of its day. Note that this is an abridged book. The full Papers runs into a number of volumes and is not a fun read if you are not into Think Tanks and position papers. * Dispatches <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307270807/> - War reportage at its finest. A classic. * Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0792264657>- We've seen (Doors playing on our mental stereos) the iconic photographs of the Vietnam War from the cameras of Larry Burroughs, Tim Page, Horst Faas, Henri Huet, Nick Ut and others. How did the "others" see the war? This book gives us a glimpse of the photos by war photographers on the Vietnamese side. I'll send my recommendations for Cambodia and Laos later. Compiling this list is proving to be time consuming. Thaths On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]>wrote: > Thaths did a lot of travel through se asia including laos, you should find > his blog someplace. > > Vinayak Hegde [02/02/12 16:43 +0530]: > > Hi silklisters, >> >> I wanted a few recommendations on History books on Baltics (Estonia / >> Latvia / Lithuania), Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovenia, >> Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary and further east) and Southeast Asia >> (mostly Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam). I have visited some of these >> countries in the past but do not know much about their history >> (medieval times, colonisation and road to independence). Wikipedia >> only sates the palata so much. >> >> I would prefer travelogues or biographies as compared to drier >> documentary reads of history. >> >> -- Vinayak >> >> > -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo! Sudhakar Chandra Slacker Without Borders
