Vietnam

Vietnam is Max Hastings’s history of the wars that transformed Vietnam between the end of Japanese occupation in 1945 and the fall of Saigon in 1975. The narrative begins with the struggle against French colonial rule, follows the partition of the country and then traces the expanding American commitment, the Tet Offensive and the final victory of communist forces.

Hastings draws on testimony and research from Vietnamese, American and other participants and deliberately treats the conflict as a Vietnamese catastrophe rather than only an American national drama. Ho Chi Minh and other political leaders appear within a history that also gives substantial attention to soldiers and civilians on all sides. The book is nonfiction political and military history.