Vietnam Comedy

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 US 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. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.

Drafted: I'm Not Supposed To Be Here is a gripping and humorous coming-of-age novel by Army veteran Rich Allan. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War era, the story follows 19-year-old Eli J. Jones, a college student who finds himself illegally drafted into the U.S. Army in 1966. From the moment Eli steps into the chaotic world of military life, he faces a series of absurd and life-threatening challenges. With his mantra "I'm not supposed to be here," Eli navigates the trials of basic training, encounters eccentric comrades, and contends with a tyrannical drill sergeant. As he ...

This work pertains to the Vietnam experience as it relates to young men performing duties in the Rear Echelon. These texts are farcical, ribald and, in some cases disturbing. No claim of objectivity in my reporting... I interpret through satire, political incorrectness, hyperbole, and profanity. Don't look for courageous deeds...in my group, heroic action didn't come without extreme prodding.

In Vietnam, Christopher Goscha tells the full history of Vietnam, from antiquity to the present day. Generations of emperors, rebels, priests, and colonizers left complicated legacies in this remarkable country. Periods of Chinese, French, and Japanese rule reshaped and modernized Vietnam, but so too did the colonial enterprises of the Vietnamese themselves as they extended their influence southward from the Red River Delta.

In this comprehensive history, Stanley Karnow demystifies the tragic ordeal of America's war in Vietnam. The book's central theme is that America's leaders, prompted as much by domestic politics as by global ambitions, carried the United States into Southeast Asia with little regard for the realities of the region. Karnow elucidates the decision-making process in Washington and Asia and recounts the political and military events that occurred after the Americans arrived in Vietnam.

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat.

Counting bodies in Vietnam. In this earthy war/peace novel, comedy frames grim pictures of war. Morris weaves combat, a love affair, and military satire—acted out by grunts, hookers, Vietcong soldiers, spies, heroes, and inane officers—into a story that is by turns terrifying, gruesome, and comic.

There are dozens of unforgettable characters, and scores of authentic scenes in Brandywine's War. From behind the headlines and the front-line dispatches has come this Rabelaisian novel. Chief Warrant Officer Vaughan completed Brandywine's War while serving his second of three tours of duty in Vietnam.

Spreading democracy takes more than cutting-edge military hardware. Winning the hearts and minds of a troubled nation is a special mission we give to bewildered young soldiers who can't speak the native language, don't know the customs, can't tell friends from enemies, and, in this wonderfully outrageous Iraq-era novel about Vietnam, wonder why they have to risk their lives spraying peanut plants, inoculating pigs, and hauling miracle rice seed for Ho Chi Minh.

Unlike other branches of the armed services, the Navy draws its police force from the ranks as temporary duty - Shore Patrol. In this funny, bawdy, moving audiobook set during the height of the Vietnam War, two career sailors in transit in Norfolk, Virginia - Billy "Bad-Ass" Buddusky and Mule Mulhall - are assigned to escort 18-year-old Larry Meadows from Norfolk to the brig in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he is to serve an eight-year sentence for petty theft. It's good duty, until the two old salts realize the injustice of the sentence and are oddly affected by the naive innocence of their young prisoner.

Drawing on hundreds of accounts by soldiers, politicians, aid workers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people, Paul Ham reconstructs for the first time the full history of our longest military campaign. From the commitment to engage, through the fight over conscription and the rise of the anti - war movement, to the tactics and horror of the battlefi eld, Ham exhumes the truth about this politicians' war - which sealed the fate of 50,000 Australian servicemen and women.

Vietnam - There & Back: A Combat Medic's Chronicle is a candid account of the time when Jim Purtell and several other combat vets found themselves conducting operations in the jungles of Vietnam during and after the Tet Offensive. Purtell describes in gritty detail what it was like to live and fight with an infantry company only to return to anti-Vietnam sentiment so strong that he and his fellow veterans felt nobody cared about them or the sacrifices they made.

The true test for surviving war lies in the mind, not on the battlefield. Inspired by the author’s own experiences of US military operations during the Vietnam War, Boot is a debut literary novel that charts the journey of marine George Orwell Hill, known affectionately as G.O. by his brothers-in-arms, as he comes to grips with the psychological impacts of war in the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia.

Einstein boarded one of three Huey slick helicopters ready to leave base camp. Thirty minutes later, 15 soldiers landed in a Montagnards village. They secured the village perimeter setting claymore mines and tripwires attached to Star-lite flares, and dug fox holes. Laboring shirtless, minus helmet, Einstein's mohawk caught the villagers' attention. Montagnards approached him conversing in a foreign dialect. They smiled and carried on as if Private Einstein comprehended.

Dan Lyons resigned as Dean at Gonzaga University to become the free world's leading advocate of winning the war in Vietnam, visiting there 17 times from 1963 to 1975. His 500 daily radio and TV broadcasts, plus his nationwide weekly columns and debates on college campuses, reached millions every week for 12 years.

"Not mainstream? Proudly so? Monkey speaks to you" - Geeknative.com "Completely bonkers and one of the most enjoyable reads I have had in ages""...the lovechild of Hunter S. Thompson and Terry Pratchett" this is an alcohol and cigar fuelled thrill ride. Booze, ghouls, guns, magic, black holes, and the Illuminati - need I say more? - The Ritual Blog 20 November Went in to wake up The Monkey this morning and found his teddy bear tied to the bed with black electrical tape and looking very much the worse for wear. The Monkey was still fast asleep with a very satisfied smile on his face. I knew ...

During the Vietnam War, GIs who managed to survive their tour of duty in one piece - more or less - were flown home in chartered airliners. They called those planes "Freedom Birds". This is the story of three young men - from wildly different backgrounds - who meet on such a plane and make a pact to spend three days together in San Francisco. Their goal: to spend every cent of their mustering out money in a party of a lifetime.

Another road trip in the Fun Loving Finn series, this one finds Finn and friends heading southeast from Missouri to Florida. Finn got a good number in the crazy Vietnam lottery and decides to learn something about life in the real world and drops out of college. When their car breaks down in Atlanta and they’re short on cash, they hole up at the Salvation Army and try to find a new ride while protecting the only possession anybody cares about: his friend Stan’s fish. Will these teenage hippies find a ride, get ripped off, or make it safely to Florida with the fish?