Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy: 1945-1975

By: Max Hastings

Narrated by: Max Hastings, Peter Noble

Length: 33 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of All Hell Let Loose comes a masterful chronicle of one of the most devastating international conflicts of the 20th century and how its people were affected.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.

Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom 40 died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, marines from North Carolina and Huey pilots from Arkansas.

No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ listeners know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle, with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

©2018 Max Hastings (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"This is a comprehensive, spellbinding, surprisingly intimate, and altogether magnificent historical narrative." (Tim O’Brien)

"Masterpiece...manages with great skill to combine the accumulation of strategic and political disaster with the real experience of those fighting on the ground." (Antony Beevor, Spectator)

"Will surely set the benchmark for years to come. This may be his best. Exhaustively researched and superbly written, it is both a balanced account of how and why the war unfolded as it did, and a gripping narrative on what it was like to take part. History as it should be: objective, immersive and compelling." (Daily Telegraph, five stars)

A must read

I found out about Max Hastings via Dan Carlin’s podcast. I have now read most of his books. This one must surely be one of his best. It sure gave me a new perspective of US politics, terror, the history of south east Asia etc. if you are from the US you have to read this book! Beat regards/ Mr.Sweden

Outstanding

Just brilliant. Gripped, shocked, saddened and excited from beginning to end.
I was pleased to hear he’d released another book. Max Hastings has the ability to weave personal experience with the grand view like no other author I know. I’ve read or listened to all of his writings on WW2 and the Falklands and never been disappointed.
The narrator, Peter Noble, is one of my favourites. He seems to achieve a ‘flow’ like few others. He does great justice to this book.
Listen to it now!!

Astonishing and Moving Account

An outstanding account of modern Vietnam. Mandated reading for any foreigner living or dealing with Vietnam.

Insight

Epic telling of the Vietnam war as we know it. It’s origins from colonialism to the ring where communism and democracy met and murdered each other. Read it and learn and know what to say to your politicians so that these crazy occurrences can never be repeated. Let’s hope.

Well written but undermined in places

This was a comprehensive telling of the Vietnam story, well researched, well read but weakened by an obvious bias.
While making entirely justified criticisms of the horrible conduct of France the author blithely airbrushes the British colonial record. There is a strong whiff of France bad, Britain good which is later converted to America stupid - Britain wise.
In particular Hastings mentions Ho Chin Mins years in London but omits that while there he would have witnessed the brutality of Irish War of Independence against the British Empire.
It is a well documented fact that the North Vietnamese learned the art of guerilla warfare from the Irish struggle and revered Michael Collins tactics but the author makes no reference to this which, in a military history is weak to say the least.
Most glaring however, Hastings briefly refers to the Bengal famine of 1943 but blithely omits the fact that it was a direct result of entirely deliberate policy of Winston Churchills government which killed an estimated 5 million people - supposedly citizens of this more enlightened colonial power,
For such a noted historian to airbrush his own countries colonial behaviour is not only wrong but undermines the credibility of an otherwise well written history.