The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam

(Paperback)

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Description

The first history for a general audience of one of Asia's most fascinating and complex countries As more and more visitors come to Vietnam, there has been for some years a need for a major history - a book which allows the outsider to understand the many layers left by earlier emperors, rebels, priests and colonizers. Christopher Goscha's new work amply fills this role. Drawing on a lifetime of thinking about Indo-China, he has created a narrative which is consistently seen from 'inside' Vietnam but never loses sight of the connections to the 'outside'. As wave after wave of invaders - whether Chinese, French, Japanese or American - have been ultimately expelled, we see the terrible cost to the Vietnamese themselves. Christopher Goscha draws on the latest research and discoveries in Vietnamese, French and English. His book is a major achievement, describing both the grand narrative of Vietnam's story but also the byways, curiosities, differences, cultures and peoples that have done so much over the centuries to define the many versions of Vietnam.

Reviews

Challenges myths, and raises questions about the socialist republic's political future... groundbreaking... Goscha manages the (not easy) task of showing Vietnam's complexity without losing the reader with too much detail... quite simply the finest, most readable single-volume history of Vietnam in English' -- Joshua Kurlantzick * Guardian *
A vigorous, eye-opening account of a country of great importance to the world, past and future. * Kirkus Reviews *
For those who have wanted a distinct and comprehensive overview of Vietnam's history, this is it. Christopher Goscha has an eye for how history connects through generations and how a country can rise from disasters in a new form, without losing sight of its past -- Odd Arne Westad, author of Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750
A splendid achievement. Christopher Goscha is one of our leading historians of modern Vietnam, and he shows it in this nuanced, fair-minded, deeply humane book. Destined to be a standard work on the subject -- Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of Americas Vietnam
Powerful and compelling. Vietnam will be of growing importance in the twenty-first-century world, particularly as China and the US rethink their roles in Asia. Christopher Goscha's book is a brilliant account of that country's history. Paying careful attention to Vietnamese voices as well as those of colonizers, he constructs a narrative that sets Vietnam in context, and makes it for western readers so much more than a half-remembered event in the Cold War -- Rana Mitter
A perceptive and much needed contribution to our understanding of Vietnam. Christopher Goscha's prodigious research is equaled only by his intimate understanding of Vietnamese culture, people, and history -- Larry Berman, author of Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent

Author Bio

Christopher Goscha is professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal. He has spent much of his adult life studying the people, politics and history of Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. He studied at Georgetown University and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (IV me Section, La Sorbonne). He has written extensively about many of the different regions of Indo-China.