H is for Hanoi


Book Description

“When the crickets call and the wind is still and the water buffalo all are sleeping,” take a night journey through the streets of Hanoi with an artist who is searching for the city’s Red River. Wafted by dreams that soar like “a hundred white birds,” wander through a city that is stilled and softened by darkness; savor the syrupy fragrance of blossom-filled trees and the music of a cake seller’s song. Meet ancient men, “old as a pagoda,” who eat porridge and chicken feet; listen as the sounds of a “school of motorcycles swim past.” Jump aboard one of them and whiz off into the night. Listen to the wisdom of a magic turtle and a river spirit. Learn that “everything we love we carry within,” and hold that thought close while falling asleep. What will you dream of? The luminous vision of Nguyen NghiaCuong’s surreal and playful paintings combines magically with Elizabeth Rush’s story of an artist’s quest to reclaim forgotten memories in a place that has become unfamiliar after a long time of being away from home. H is for Hanoi evokes fairytales and bedtime stories that have lulled children to sleep for centuries, while taking all who turn its pages into a special dream in a very special city, a place that most of us have never seen.




Harbin to Hanoi


Book Description

Colonial powers in China and northern Vietnam employed the built environment for many purposes: as an expression of imperial aspirations, a manifestation of supremacy, a mission to civilize, a re-creation of a home away from home, or simply as a place to live and work. In this volume, scholars of city planning, architecture, and Asian and imperial history provide a detailed analysis of how colonization worked on different levels, and how it was expressed in stone, iron, and concrete. The process of creating the colonial built environment was multilayered and unpredictable. This book uncovers the regional diversity of the colonial built form found from Harbin to Hanoi, varied experiences of the foreign powers in Asia, flexible interactions between the colonizers and the colonized, and the risks entailed in building and living in these colonies and treaty ports.




Hanoi's War


Book Description

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam. Hanoi's War renders transparent the internal workings of America's most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Using never-before-seen archival materials from the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as materials from other archives around the world, Nguyen explores the politics of war-making and peace-making not only from the North Vietnamese perspective but also from that of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, presenting a uniquely international portrait.




Abandoning Vietnam


Book Description

Drawing upon both archival research and his own military experiences in Vietnam, Willbanks focuses on military operations from 1969 through 1975. He begins by analyzing the events that led to a change in U.S. strategy in 1969 and the subsequent initiation of Vietnamization. He then critiques the implementation of that policy and the combat performance of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), which finally collapsed in 1975.




Vietnam Travel Map Eighth Edition


Book Description

The Vietnam Travel Map from Periplus is designed as a convenient, easy-to-use tool for travelers. Designed to fit easily into a purse or pocket and created using durable coated paper, this map is made to open and fold multiple times, whether it's the entire map that you want to view or one panel at a time. Following highways and byways, this map will show you how to maneuver your way to banks, gardens, hotels, golf courses, museums, monuments, restaurants, churches and temples, movie theaters, shopping centers and more, including ALL the places you'll want to visit on your trip! This 8th edition area maps and city plans are scaled to: Northern Vietnam 1:2,100,000 Southern Vietnam 1:2,100,000 Halong Bay 1:300,000 Hanoi 1:20,000 Ho Chi Minh City 1:20,000 Hue 1:20,000 Dalat 1:25,000 Nha Trang 1:20,000 Vung Tau 1:50,000 Hoi An 1:20,000 Considered the number one publisher of maps for foreign tourists and travelers in Asia, Periplus Travel Maps cover most of the major cities and travel destinations in the Asia-Pacific region. The series includes an amazing variety of fascinating destinations, from the multifaceted subcontinent of India to the bustling city-state of Singapore and the 'western style' metropolis of Sydney to the Asian charms of Bali. All titles are regularly updated, ensuring they keep up with the considerable changes in this fast-developing part of the world. This extensive geographical reach and attention to detail mean that Periplus Travel Maps are the natural first choice for anyone traveling in the region.




Vietnam's Year of the Rat


Book Description

Vietnam's Year of the Rat explores the lunar New Year 1960 and the dynamic relationship between two competing groups vying for control in the Republic of Vietnam. One group, led by United States Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow, worked toward directing Vietnam towards an American-style democracy that focused on forcing reforms within the Saigon government. The other group, headed by Republic of Vietnam President Ngo Đinh Diệm, attempted to navigate the demands of Durbrow and the State Department and to confront internal opposition and an emerging external threat while trying to further the goals of the Republic. The result was a series of failed opportunities by both sides to resolve the differences of the two complementary, if conflicting, strategies. Vietnam's Year of the Rat offers an alternative to the now standard historiography for this period of the study in the Vietnam War by providing a Vietnamese viewpoint into the story of that long and tragic war.







Marigold


Book Description

Marigold presents the first rigorously documented, in-depth story of one of the Vietnam War's last great mysteries: the secret peace initiative, codenamed "Marigold," that sought to end the war in 1966. The initiative failed, the war dragged on for another seven years, and this episode sank into history as an unresolved controversy. Antiwar critics claimed President Johnson had bungled (or, worse, deliberately sabotaged) a breakthrough by bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned secret U.S.-North Vietnamese encounter in Poland. Yet, LBJ and top aides angrily insisted that Poland never had authority to arrange direct talks and Hanoi was not ready to negotiate. This book uses new evidence from long hidden communist sources to show that, in fact, Poland was authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts and that Hanoi had committed to entering talks with Washington. It reveals LBJ's personal role in bombing Hanoi as he utterly disregarded the pleas of both the Polish and his own senior advisors. The historical implications of missing this opportunity are immense: Marigold might have ended the war years earlier, saving thousands of lives, and dramatically changed U.S. political history.




Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement in Vietnam


Book Description

This book explores the complex legal, cultural, economic and human rights issues associated with development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) in Vietnam. As in many parts of the world, urban expansion and large-scale infrastructure projects in Vietnam often rely on forced land acquisition, which can result in the involuntary resettlement of households and entire communities. This book examines the adequacy of monetary and in-kind compensation and the support that resettlees need for successful integration into host communities and for sustainable livelihoods and improved well-being. It presents new paradigms and practices that place affected households at the centre of project planning and implementation to fully address the needs of the most vulnerable. This includes women, the elderly, and ethnic minority groups. Bringing together research evidence, practical experience, and insights of distinguished researchers, this book is the first to systematically examine DIDR in Vietnam, a single-party state seeking to balance state interests with the demands of investors and civil society for human rights and participation by affected people. Combining the latest evidence and research findings on development-induced displacement and resettlement in Vietnam with practical experiences in project implementation, this book will be a useful guide for researchers across development, migration, and Southeast Asian Studies, as well as practitioners and policy makers. Its lessons will also be relevant to other countries facing rapid development.




Optimization on Low Rank Nonconvex Structures


Book Description

Global optimization is one of the fastest developing fields in mathematical optimization. In fact, an increasing number of remarkably efficient deterministic algorithms have been proposed in the last ten years for solving several classes of large scale specially structured problems encountered in such areas as chemical engineering, financial engineering, location and network optimization, production and inventory control, engineering design, computational geometry, and multi-objective and multi-level optimization. These new developments motivated the authors to write a new book devoted to global optimization problems with special structures. Most of these problems, though highly nonconvex, can be characterized by the property that they reduce to convex minimization problems when some of the variables are fixed. A number of recently developed algorithms have been proved surprisingly efficient for handling typical classes of problems exhibiting such structures, namely low rank nonconvex structures. Audience: The book will serve as a fundamental reference book for all those who are interested in mathematical optimization.