Don't Cry For Us, Saigon


Book Description

The United States military did not lose the Vietnam War! The South Vietnamese government lost the Vietnam War. With many inaccurate books, biased statements, lack of understanding, and facts, I decided to write a Vietnamese history book with emphasis on the Second Indochina War. This book will correct many of those misconceptions about the Vietnam War, answer controversial questions, and give readers a microcosm and basic dynamics of the Vietnam War. I recorded and archived highlights of the Vietnam War and the accounts of American military heroes whose sacrifices and heroic exploits might otherwise be lost to history. The poignant, riveting, and the gripping reality of war and the demons and misfortune of the Vietnam veterans will be depicted in the book. This book is intended for a variety of audiences: veterans, family members, gold star mothers, organizations, agencies, clubs, college students, faculty, and history buffs. Search-and-destroy operations in South Vietnam will be described in comprehensive detail and why President Johnson later changed the name of search-and-destroy operations to reconnaissance in force. This book will show that the worst atrocity of the Vietnam War occurred in the United States when America shunned and discriminated against its Vietnam War veterans and gold star mothers! This book is a first-person account of high school teenyboppers suddenly answering the call for duty and turning into elite combat warriors virtually overnight. Vietnam War veterans saw and experienced horrific savage and direct combat repeatedly that humans aren't intended to see. Testimonies of seasoned combat Airborne Infantry soldiers, Pathfinders, and Special Forces whose average age was twenty-one will be depicted through empirical vignettes. These first-person vignettes will describe the carnage of firefights, mortar attacks, the stench of human decay and flesh torn and broken, and the camaraderie and bonds of men at war. Do not judge these warrior-leader heroes unless you have walked a mile in their jungle boots through a jungle in a combat environment. Remember, once upon a time, we were all like you! Myths of the Vietnam War will be refuted, rebutted, and debunked. Agent Orange and other herbicides used in the Vietnam War will be discussed. This book will help all veterans, their families, and America to better understand and come to some closure and aid in catharsis. We are awesome! It is chic and vogue to be a Vietnam veteran now.




Miss Saigon (PVG)


Book Description

Miss Saigon (PVG) presents 12 songs from Boublil & Schonberg’s hit musical, Miss Saigon. Each song has been freshly engraved for piano and voice, with accompanying lyrics, allowing you to relive the beauty and drama of the show. With beautiful and faithful transciptions, alongside full-colour photography, this book is an essential purchase for any fan. Songlist: - The Heat Is On In Saigon - The Movie In My Mind - Why God Why? - Sun And Moon - The Last Night Of The World - I Still Believe - I’d Give My Life For You - Bui-doi - What A Waste - Too Much For One Heart - Maybe - The American Dream




THE RAIN STILL FALLS IN SAIGON


Book Description

This book is a collection of stories that portray life as it is lived today under the shadow of the repressive and corrupt communist regime that now rules in Vietnam. The characters who live in these pages represent many levels of social class in the early 21st century in Vietnam.The stories illuminate the hardships and the soul-crushing routine of day-to-day life in a society governed by bullying bureaucrats and petty apparatchiks. The reader will meet orphaned children who wander the streets—selling newspapers or lottery tickets, collecting rubbish in exchange for a few spoonfuls of rice. There are stories of honest and patriotic intellectuals who have lost their way in a world that does not value their accomplishments. There are also sympathetic communists who now question their ideology and want to find a better way, but they cannot act for fear of economic hardship and even imprisonment. Another story addresses the issue of young women who have become victims of human trafficking, sold like cattle to rich foreigners. The title story, “The Rain still Falls in Saigon,” describes the return of an expatriate to her native land and her feelings of nostalgia and sadness as she surveys her homeland from an outsider’s perspective. All of the stories reflect the tears that the Vietnamese people have been crying for their country for more than 65 years.Doug BurkeEditor-at-large




Jane Fonda


Book Description

“The definitive portrait of a woman conflicted, torn between ferocious ambition, family, and feminist causes” (Gail Sheehy, author of Passages). Jane Fonda emerged from a heartbreaking Hollywood family drama to become a ’60s onscreen ingénue and then an Oscar-winning actress. At the top of her game she risked it all, speaking out against the Vietnam War and shocking the world with a trip to Hanoi. One of Hollywood’s most committed feminists, she financed her husband Tom Hayden’s political career in the ’80s with a series of exercise videos that sparked a nationwide fitness craze. Even more surprising was Fonda’s next turn, as a Stepford Wife of the Gulfstream set, marrying Ted Turner and seemingly walking away from her ideals and her career. Patricia Bosworth goes behind the image of an American superwoman, revealing the real Jane Fonda—more powerful and vulnerable than we ever expected—whose struggles for high achievement, love, and motherhood mirror the conflicts of an entire generation of women. In the hands of this seasoned, tenacious biographer, the evolution of one of the world’s most controversial and successful women becomes nothing less than a great, enthralling American life. “A book that gets unusually close to its subject. It sees what Ms. Fonda cannot see about herself.” —The New York Times “Bosworth’s thorough account of this wild, uniquely twentieth-century Hollywood life makes Jane Fonda the actress even more intriguing.” —San Francisco Chronicle




Don't Cry For The Brave


Book Description

Lieutenant Bob McDade volunteers for the Vietnam War instead of becoming a school teacher. He made the wrong decision. When Lieutenant Bob McDade witnesses an officer ordering the execution of villagers while on an operation to gather intelligence about the Viet Cong, he questions his role as a seasoned veteran. Conflicted, he argues with his commanding officer and is court martialled as a result. McDade is found guilty and is facing disgrace, but his lawyer wins a plea that he is a victim of 'battle stress'. He is sent to a veteran’s psychiatric hospital in the US while the army happily closes down the issue of a war crime. Meanwhile, Gail is dedicated to her work in another veteran’s home in the US. She met McDade in Saigon while she was working as a nurse, although the couple knew each other from high school, and they fell in love. Uncertain of whether he is sane or not, McDade eventually walks out of the hospital. He plans to leave, and he wants to take Gail with him. Will he persuade her to leave her job and nurse elsewhere, or will Gail be destroyed by the very madness she is trying to cure? Focusing on battle stress and exploring the difficult issue of front line soldiers under stress who kill civilians, Don’t Cry for the Brave is an intriguing novel for those who enjoy military and crime fiction.




Beneath the Rock


Book Description

In this unique novel, BENEATH THE ROCK, Tommy Birk evokes the anguish of combat veterans who leave their wars but whose wars don't leave them. He explores their helplessness to stop the strange osmotic process by which their pain passes on to their families. In this passionate and powerful story, Ernie and Gunny Balbach, who had fought on opposite sides during WW2, are now joined by Ernie's son, Timmy—an equally damaged veteran of the still-in-progress Vietnam War—and live as outcasts at Piankashaw Rock, where they feel safe in the company of other misfits. Ernie and Gunny, sustained by the women who love them, and Timmy, in love with the beautiful but conflicted Maria, all prodded by a mystic priest with his own dark secrets, come to realize they and their families will escape the vicious circles of history and find redemption only after they take on and defeat the evil that haunts them.




A Dragon Child: Reflections of a Daughter of Annam in America


Book Description

A Dragon Child: Reflections of a Daughter of Annam in America is the story of a Vietnamese Catholic raised within the structure of the French colonial system. Her upbringing was somewhat privileged as the daughter of a provincial administrator in the central highlands of Vietnam. As a child, and later as a young woman, she embraced French culture and aspired to French ideals. She was educated at a French boarding school for the children of the elite. Subsequently she received a degree in French teaching from the University of Saigon and became a lycee teacher and administrator. In 1975, she left on one of the last military planes accompanied by her four children and entered a new life as a refugee in the U.S. She ultimately resettled in Western Massachusetts. She then went back to school and obtained her Ph.D. in Francophone literature. After seeing to her children's education she began her academic career and started to teach French in the Five College academic community. She has fulfilled the "American dream" as have her children. In the process she has rediscovered her cultural roots and has helped others to negotiate the same path.




Inside Out & Back Again


Book Description

Moving to America turns H&à's life inside out. For all the 10 years of her life, H&à has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by, and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. H&à and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, H&à discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape, and the strength of her very own family. This is the moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next.




Congressional Record


Book Description




Guts and Glory


Book Description

Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film is the definitive study of the symbiotic relationship between the film industry and the United States armed services. Since the first edition was published nearly two decades ago, the nation has experienced several wars, both on the battlefield and in movie theatres and living rooms at home. Now, author Lawrence Suid has extensively revised and expanded his classic history of the mutual exploitation of the film industry and the military, exploring how Hollywood has reflected and effected changes in America's image of its armed services. He offers in-depth looks at such classic films as Wings, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Longest Day, Patton, Top Gun, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Saving Private Ryan, as well as the controversial war movies The Green Berets, M*A*S*H, the Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July.