The Tragedy of Vietnam - My Thoughts

My knowledge of the Vietnam war is, or rather was, pretty limited. Although I'd heard it being mentioned various times, I never really took the effort or initiative to find out what actually happened during the war.

I personally thought this book was extremely informative and was a terrific way of learning more about the war. After reading it, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what the Vietnam war was, and what was going on around the world during that period. Even though at times, the overdose of information made it dificult to differentiate between different battles, bombings and invasions, by the time I reached the end of the book, I felt that overall, I had pretty much gotten the gist of what happened during those years.

One thing that I especially liked about the book was that it didn't seem to have too much bias in it. In spite of being an American, I didn't get the feeling that Hearden was trying to defend the U.S. and its actions during the war in any way. To the contrary, he pointed out some of the flaws with the U.S. strategy during the war quite blatantly at times. The neutrality of the writing kept my interest alive because I knew that I was getting a somewhat accurate account of the events that happened.

I'm really glad that we read this book in the beginning of the semester because it has definitely sparked interest in me about getting to know more about the Vietnam war throughout the rest of this course. The Vietnam War is, no doubt, a very important event in U.S. history and this book, according to me, did a fantastic job in providing vital information associated with the war and giving the reader a feel of what that time period was like. The bloodshed, the lives lost, the battles won, the treaties written; the Tragedy of Vietnam has highlighted almost every aspect of the war and has helped me realize the magnitude of it. I'm now charged up and really looking forward to learning even more about the war and understanding the events that happened during those years.