Vietnam. The History of Tragedy. 1945-1975

"Vietnam" — another fundamental work by Hastings, author of the bestsellers "The First World War" and "The Second World War", a truly vast narrative about the epic struggle. In his new book, Hastings describes the Vietnam War in detail: the chronology of combat encounters, the life of ordinary people during the war, atrocities from both sides of the conflict, behind-the-scenes political games, personal memories of participants.
The Vietnam War is one of the most controversial conflicts in the modern Western world, which became a national humiliation for France in 1954 and then, in 1975, an even greater disgrace for the USA. While working on the book, Max Hastings spent three years talking to numerous participants from both sides, researching hundreds of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Tet Offensive of 1968, the air blitz of North Vietnam, the lesser-known bloody confrontation at Dai Do, where a battalion of U.S. Marines was virtually destroyed, are vivid fragments of the overall panorama of the war among the jungles and rice fields, in which 2 million people perished.