Tom Bissell is a contributing editor at Harper’s, and I originally read a version of his book, The Father Of All Things, in that magazine. In the piece he mentioned that his father was a friend of Phillip Caputo’s, and that led me to read his excellent Vietnam memoir. The book is an intriguing mix of memoir, travelogue, and history about Vietnam and Bissell’s connection through his father encapsulated in their 10-day trip to Vietnam together. This kind of approach always intrigues me as we get to see a personalized version of a big story and it also makes a place that I have visited seem knowable. In Section Two: "An Illness Caused By Youth or A Few Questions About The Vietnam War," the discussion is framed by four very interesting questions:
1) Was Ho Chi Mihn a Stalinist?
2) Why were the leaders of South Vietnam so corrupt and incompetent?
3) Could the United States have won the war in Vietnam?
4) What was the Soviet Union actually attempting to accomplish in Vietnam?
There are two other aspects aside for the writing that impressed me in this volume as well. Every other pare (the odd pages) had headings that summarized the contents of the odd pages, which I thought was really cool. Furthermore in the bibliography, Bissell included notes on selected volumes to explain why he thought the particular book was useful or amusing or whatever. I really enjoyed this volume mostly because of the author’s bias, it is almost postmodern in his full disclosure. I’ve been to Vietnam twice and I would go again in a heartbeat, this book makes me want to do it sooner than later.
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