{"product_id":"vietnam-an-epic-tragedy-19451975","title":"Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy: 1945-1975","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the best-selling author of All Hell Let Loose comes a masterful chronicle of one of the most devastating international conflicts of the 20th century and how its people were affected.  Vietnam became the Western worlds most divisive modern conflict  precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954  then a vastly greater one for the United States 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. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu  the Tet offensive  the air blitz of North Vietnam  and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido  where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out  together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minhs warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people.  Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy  yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people  of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming  naked girl seared by napalm  it forgets countless eviscerations  beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas  Southern paratroopers  Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota  Marines from North Carolina  Huey pilots from Arkansas.  No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences  in the fashion that Max Hastings readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants  statesmen and soldiers  to create an extraordinary record.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44945352097845,"sku":"ByrdShop_0008132984","price":228.2,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780008132989_e25c7bfa-b124-4cb3-b016-de82607de68d.jpg?v=1772681392","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/vietnam-an-epic-tragedy-19451975","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}