From September 1970-71, Dr. Donald Lookingbill, Captain, U.S. Army, kept a diary about life on an Army base and about his experience as a general medical officer for an infantry battalion during the late days of our War in Vietnam. The diary, along with letters from his wife, also chronicles a love story about a family separated for a year by that war. Forty years later, Dr. Lookingbill, Professor Emeritus, Mayo Medical School, reflects on the many costs of war, and on the similarities between our wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The mantra of the book is a statement made over a century ago: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Merriam Press Military History. A history of military and civilian medicine in Vietnam from World War II when the Japanese occupied Indochina through the French occupation after World War II and the American involvement in Vietnam, up to the present day. It is also a journal of the author's service as a doctor in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and later when he organized humanitarian aid for the Vietnamese and in particular assisting one hospital and its staff with training, equipment and supplies. Foreword by Patrick Brady MG, USA, Ret, who served as a Dustoff helicopter pilot in Vietnam and recipient of the Medal of Honor. 63 photos, 2 illustrations, 5 maps.
Merriam Press History. Bach Mai Hospital was founded in 1911 and has become the largest, comprehensive general and teaching hospital in Vietnam. Each year, the hospital receives hundreds of foreign delegations who go there for training, sharing medical knowledge, or to cooperate in development of research. Bartecchi served in the US Army as a Flight Surgeon during the Vietnam War and in addition to caring for wounded troops, organized medical forays by helicopter to towns throughout the Mekong Delta. During his tour in Vietnam he developed an admiration and respect for the resilient and proud Vietnamese people. In the mid-90s, he became involved with assisting the hospital improve their facility and providing training for doctors, nurses and staff there, including exchanges of medical personnel between Bach Mai and American hospitals, as assistance in the area of medical equipment and supplies, donated by organizations and corporations. This book provides the background to this story. 77 photos.
When John Carroll Whitener volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army, he had no idea that five months later President Johnson would begin sending combat and support troops to South Vietnam to fight the Communist insurgency. He expected to be assigned to a stateside military hospital, complete his tour of duty, and return to his hometown in rural North Carolina to live happily ever after. By 1966, however, he found himself in war torn Vietnam, setting up an army optometry clinic in support of the 101st Airborne. While the airborne troops faced the Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnam soldiers, Whitener faced a war within himself regarding his faith and sexuality. In this intimate and candid memoir, Whitener shares his diary entries, reflecting and connecting the events of the war with current political issues, as well as his spiritual war to reconcile his homosexuality with his fundamentalist religious upbringing. With wry observations Don't Ask and I Will Tell chronicles his time in Vietnam and his further travels across Asia. He credits the American War in Vietnam as the catalyst for his career in public health and activism for gay rights. More than fifty years later, he looks back on his journey toward inner peace and self-acceptance.
It's 1965. A young surgeon is drafted into the U.S. Navy and sent to Vietnam, where he finds himself closer than he ever imagined to the carnage of war. He performs operations while under fire and sees wounds that can barely be contemplated. Marines are dying on the operating table in front of him. The small-town moral certainties he grew up believing in may themselves succumb to the ravages he is witnessing. More than anything, he wants to make it home to marry the woman he loves.
A runaway bestseller in Quebec, with foreign rights sold to 15 countries around the world, Kim Thúy's Governor General's Literary Award-winning Ru is a lullaby for Vietnam and a love letter to a new homeland. Ru. In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young girl feels the embrace of a new community, and revels in the chance to be part of the American Dream. As an adult, the waters become rough again: now a mother of two sons, she must learn to shape her love around the younger boy's autism. Moving seamlessly from past to present, from history to memory and back again, Ru is a book that celebrates life in all its wonder: its moments of beauty and sensuality, brutality and sorrow, comfort and comedy.
BAPTISM BY FIRE Chris Ronnau volunteered for the Army and was sent to Vietnam in January 1967, armed with an M-14 rifle and American Express traveler’s checks. But the latter soon proved particularly pointless as the private first class found himself in the thick of two pivotal, fiercely fought Big Red One operations, going head-to-head against crack Viet cong and NVA troops in the notorious Iron Triangle and along the treacherous Cambodian border near Tay Ninh. Patrols, ambushes, plunging down VC tunnels, search and destroy missions–there were many ways to drive the enemy from his own backyard, as Ronnau quickly discovered. Based on the journal Ronnau kept in Vietnam, Blood Trails captures the hellish jungle war in all its stark life-and-death immediacy. This wrenching chronicle is also stirring testimony to the quiet courage of those unsung American heroes, many not yet twenty-one, who had a job to do and did it without complaint–fighting, sacrificing, and dying for their country. Includes sixteen pages of rare and never-before-seen combat photos
Bernard B Fall was 40 years old when he was killed by a booby trap in northern South Vietnam on February 21, 1967. By the time of his death he had already authored seven books on Vietnam. This book, first published shortly after Dr Fall's death, is a tribute to his life's work. It contains the only known autobiographical account of his life, several previously unpublished articles, notes for 'Street Without Joy Revisited', and transcripts of Dr Fall's tape recordings, including his last recorded words.
“Includes some of Lam’s most memorable writings, about cuisine, self-esteem, sex and kung fu, all seen from a two-hemisphere perspective.” —SFGate East Eats West shines new light on the bridges and crossroads where two global regions meld into one worldwide “immigrant nation.” In this new nation, with its amalgamation of divergent ideas, tastes, and styles, today’s bold fusion becomes tomorrow’s classic. But while the space between East and West continues to shrink in this age of globalization, some cultural gaps remain. In this collection of twenty-one personal essays, Andrew Lam, the award-winning author of Perfume Dreams, continues to explore the Vietnamese diaspora, this time concentrating not only on how the East and West have changed but how they are changing each other. Lively and engaging, East Eats West searches for meaning in nebulous territory charted by very few. Part memoir, part meditation, and part cultural anthropology, East Eats West is about thriving in the West with one foot still in the East. “In these lovely, wise, probing essays, Andrew Lam not only illuminates the crucial twenty-first-century issues of immigration and cultural identity but the greater, enduring issues of what it means to be human . . . a compelling book.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author “Andrew Lam is an expert time-traveler, collapsing childhood and adulthood; years of war and peace; and the evolution of language in his own life, time, and mind. To read Andrew’s work is a joy and a profound journey.” —Farai Chideya, author of The Episodic Career “One of the best American essayists of his generation.” —Wayne Karlin, author of A Wolf by the Ears
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)
