![]() In films like Apocalypse Now and Platoon, the Vietnamese (often other Asians portraying Vietnamese) are never more than walk-ons whose principal roles seem to be to die or wail in the ashes of incinerated villages. ![]() Hollywood has been still more Americentric. If you are looking for exceptional Vietnam War history books, that should include Bright Shining Lie (Sheehan), Vietnam (Karnow), We Were Soldiers Once.and Young (Moore). Among all those volumes, you’ll find only a handful (Robert Olen Butler’s A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain comes to mind) with Vietnamese characters speaking in their own voices. That outlook is reflected in most of the literature - and Vietnam was a very literary war, producing an immense library of fiction and nonfiction. So it is that we, citizens of a superpower, have viewed the Vietnam War as a primarily an American drama in which the febrile land of tigers and elephants was simply a backdrop and Vietnamese mere extras. ![]() The more powerful a country is, the more disposed its people will be to see it as the lead actor in the sometimes farcical, often tragic pageant of history. Vietnam Travel Books for Children & Adults ![]()
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