Review by New York Times Review
HUE 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam, by Mark Bowden. (Atlantic Monthly, $30.) With his signature blend of deep reporting and character-driven storytelling, the author of "Black Hawk Down" offers a look at the 24-day battle that exposed the hollowness of American claims about the Vietnam War. THE CHICKENSHIT CLUB: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives, by Jesse Eisinger. (Simon & Schuster, $28.) Why was virtually no one prosecuted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis? A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines the cultural shifts in the legal and business worlds since the turn of the century that led to solicitous attitudes toward corporations. MAKING RENT IN BED-STUY: A Memoir of Trying to Make It in New York City, by Brandon Harris. (Amistad/HarperCollins, paper, $15.99.) In this searing debut memoir, an African-American critic describes his life as an aspiring filmmaker in a historically black neighborhood, analyzing gentrification and millennial culture. BEHAVE: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert M. Sapolsky. (Penguin Press, $35.) This quirky, opinionated and magisterial synthesis of psychology and neurobiology offers a wild and mind-opening ride into a better understanding of just where our behavior comes from. BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS, by Lawrence Osborne. (Hogarth, $25.) On a Greek island, two wealthy young women encounter a handsome Syrian refugee, whom they endeavor to help with disastrous results. Osborne is a psychologically acute observer of privilege as the novel takes on the tone of an existential noir. RETURN TO GLORY: The Story of Ford's Revival and Victory at the Toughest Race in the World, by Matthew DeBord. (Atlantic Monthly, $26.) This page-turning combination of business book and adventure saga tells the tale of the Ford Motor Company's triumphant return to championship competition at the endurance race called the 24 Hours of Le Mans. THE HUE AND CRY AT OUR HOUSE: A Year Remembered, by Benjamin Taylor. (Penguin, paper, $16.) Asixth grader's chance meeting with President Kennedy on the morning of his assassination opens this touching and eloquent self-portrait of an odd, bewildered boy born into the frightening middle of the 20 th century. LOVE LIKE BLOOD, by Mark Billingham. (Atlantic Monthly, $26.) Detective Inspector Tom Thorne investigates the murder of a Bangladeshi teenager in a novel that probes the phenomenon of honor killings and casts doubt on the work of the Metropolitan Police's Honor Crimes Unit. STANDARD DEVIATION, by Katherine Heiny. (Knopf, $25.95.) This humorous and insightful first novel, the portrait of a New York City marriage, is full of sly charm. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 30, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Huê was Vietnam's capital from 1802 to 1945, giving it great symbolic value. By January of 1968, it had been spared some of the worst violence that plagued other cities in South Vietnam. American intelligence agents anticipated stepped-up Vietcong attacks but viewed American military bases as the likeliest targets. Instead, Huê endured one of the most prolonged, vicious, and politically decisive battles of the Vietnam War. On January 31 (the first day of Tet, the lunar new year), thousands of North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops attacked multiple points and quickly seized most of the lightly defended city. Over the next 24 days, U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops retook the city in savage urban warfare that left much of Huê in ruin. Best-selling Bowden (The Three Battles of Wanat, 2016) views this struggle through the experiences and recollections of combatants from both sides. The perspectives of North Vietnamese and Vietcong fighters are especially revealing, confirming that they regarded their struggle as a fight for national independence rather than for communism. After Huê and the wider Tet Offensive, the U.S. looked for a way out of the quagmire, rather than victory. Bowden has created an epic masterpiece of heroism and sacrifice, and a testament to the tragic futility of the American experience in Vietnam.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Veteran journalist Bowen (The Three Battles of Wanat) illuminates the gut-wrenching monthlong slaughter of one of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battles, in which American and North Vietnamese forces fought in the streets of the storied royal capital of Huê'. Washington claimed a tactical victory, but Hanoi gained the psychological edge; the mismatch between official American claims and the dispatches emerging from American journalists undermined the already wavering resolve back home. This is grim storytelling at its finest; Bowen digs deep into the personal recollections of scores of participants to offer evocative portraits of beleaguered Marine grunts and the hapless commanders who sent them to their doom; stoic female Viet Cong commandos; and journalists who captured the unfolding tragedy that belied the infamously inaccurate body counts. But what grips the reader most are the stories of Huê''s trapped civilians, who, during the year's most festive holiday-Tet, the Lunar New Year-are hurled into an explosive maelstrom of fatal score-settling and destruction delivered by their own countrymen. Bowen confronts head-on the horrific senselessness of battle and the toll it takes on people, and he grants Huê' the regard it deserves as a defining moment in a war that continues to influence how America views its role in the world. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
In early 1968, North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces launched the Tet Offensive, a series of hundreds of attacks throughout South Vietnam, the largest of which took place in the symbolically significant former royal capital of Hue. Bowden (writer in residence, Univ. of Delaware; The Three Battles of Wanat) provides a thorough description of the Battle of Hue by examining the experiences of soldiers and civilians on all sides of the conflict. This work argues that Gen. William Westmorland's fixation on the false notion that the Tet Offensive was a deliberate misdirection from North Vietnam's real target of Khe Sanh led to poor decisions by the U.S. military that resulted in the prolongation of the Battle of Hue. The author makes a strong case that this conflict had a lasting impact on the course of the Vietnam War, the significance of which has yet to be properly analyzed by the historic literature. VERDICT Although the gruesome details of death and dismemberment may prove difficult reading for some, this work provides a fascinating look at the challenges and horrors of urban warfare and is essential for anyone interested in the Vietnam War.-Joshua Wallace, Tarleton State Univ. Lib. Stephenville, TX © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A stirring history of the 1968 battle that definitively turned the Vietnam War into an American defeat.On the first day of the Tet Lunar New Year holiday in 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces attacked the ancient city of Hue, the one-time capital of Vietnam and the country's third-largest city. American forces scrambled to relieve the U.S. garrison there, amazed, as Bowden (The Three Battles of Wanat, 2016, etc.) writes, to be in an actual city after experiencing only "air bases, rice paddies, and jungle." The battle occasioned not just surprise on the part of the grunts, but also a change in behavior on the part of the attackers, who had orders not just to liberate Hue, but "to look and behave like winners." The tactic, to say nothing of the heavy losses inflicted on American and South Vietnamese forces, did indeed shift perceptions. The author observes that after Hue, it was only a matter of time before America would leave Vietnam, and in the bargain, ordinary American citizens would never again trust their government. Bowden delivers a series of brilliantly constructed set pieces, beginning with a moment of proto-social engineering in which a young, pretty Viet Cong learned about American troop movements in the city by flirting with GIs outside their compound. Devotees of Vietnam movies such as Full Metal Jacket will see several scenes come into real-life focus, with a football hero as commander and companies of troops bearing names like Hotel and Echo rooting out snipers and enemy columns, occasionally violating orders to save themselves by letting loose ground-fired napalm ("They caught hell for thatthe commanders were worried about setting the city on fire") against a smart, entrenched foe. Building on portraits of combatants on all sides, Bowden delivers an anecdotally rich, careful account of the complex campaign to take the city. One of the best books on a single action in Vietnam, written by a tough, seasoned journalist who brings the events of a half-century past into sharp relief. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
