Vietnam's Year of the Rat

Vietnam's Year of the Rat
Author: Ronald Bruce Frankum, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2014-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786478152

Vietnam's Year of the Rat explores the lunar New Year 1960 and the dynamic relationship between two competing groups vying for control in the Republic of Vietnam. One group, led by United States Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow, worked toward directing Vietnam towards an American-style democracy that focused on forcing reforms within the Saigon government. The other group, headed by Republic of Vietnam President Ngo Đinh Diệm, attempted to navigate the demands of Durbrow and the State Department and to confront internal opposition and an emerging external threat while trying to further the goals of the Republic. The result was a series of failed opportunities by both sides to resolve the differences of the two complementary, if conflicting, strategies. Vietnam's Year of the Rat offers an alternative to the now standard historiography for this period of the study in the Vietnam War by providing a Vietnamese viewpoint into the story of that long and tragic war.

The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt

The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt
Author: Michael G. Vann
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2019
Genre: Hanoi (Vietnam)
ISBN: 9780190602697

"Tells the darkly humorous story of the French colonial state's failed efforts to impose its vision of modernity upon the colonial city of Hanoi, Vietnam. This book offers a case study in the history of imperialism, highlighting the racialized economic inequalities of empire, colonization as a form of modernization, and industrial capitalism's creation of a radical power differential between "the West and the rest." On a deeper level, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt will engage the contradictions unique to the French Third Republic's colonial "civilizing mission," the development of Vietnamese resistance to French rule, the history of disease, and aspects of environmental history"--

The Great Race

The Great Race
Author: Dawn Casey
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2018-09-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1782854819

Race with the animals of the Zodiac as they compete to have the years of the Chinese calendar named after them. The excitement-filled story is followed by notes on the Chinese calendar, important Chinese holidays, and a chart outlining the animal signs based on birth years.

Decoding Ancient Chinese Vs. Vietnamese Zodiacs

Decoding Ancient Chinese Vs. Vietnamese Zodiacs
Author: Antoine Khai Nguyen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2019-03-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9781090693686

Ancient Chinese zodiac's origin was still unknown to this day. Beside the emperor Jade legend for children, we do not know much about it. It was told that the Chinese zodiac was spread from China to other Asian countries, therefore many zodiac variations exist today. Was there any reason why the Rabbit sign was replaced by the Cat sign, the Pig became the Boar? the Sheep could be the Goat and vice versa? Why was the majestic Dragon belittled to the same level of all other earthly animals? Were these zodiac animals chosen randomly? Did their position in the zodiac have a meaning at all? And finally did the original inventor(s) of the Chinese zodiac ever intend to leave a coded message for his/their fellow humans? You will be surprised that the new evidence will show that they did. The message embedded in the ancient Chinese zodiac was so artfully scripted that no one could unmask it until this day. How could it be? the zodiac was so old and how could it be hidden for thousands of years? It turns out that it is a common phenomenon after all. The Egyptian hieroglyphs were finally decoded just a century ago when a French scholar named Jean-François Champollion discovered the Rosetta stone that contained three translations of a same text written in Egyptian hieroglyphs and deciphered it successfully. Of course the Chinese zodiac does not contain hundreds of scripted symbols but its twelve symbols remain elusive to this day. No one knows the true story, only a children oriented legend exists. As a matter of fact, for the Chinese zodiac, more than a puzzle, not only you will have to put all the pieces into their original places in order to see the actual image but you will have also to find the right filter in order to see the hidden the path of the inventor's thinking and this hidden path will lead you to the final place where the true message is revealed. When you can read the message then everything will become clear and the message will even surprise you more: it contains an amazingly the first declaration of freedom for mankind - an universal value that we all cherish today. Last but not least, the message will also reveal who were truly its inventors. All in all, this extraordinarily coded message is finally revealed for the first time. So how was it secretly embedded in the zodiac? The book will explain it all.All the Chinese ideograms of the zodiac signs, at first look, do not resemble anything, let alone the animals they stand for. Most Chinese scholars said that the ideograms represent the calendar hours, months and years therefore they did not have any etymological bearing with the animals themselves, but rather an astronomical meaning. Unfortunately the etymology for these ideograms do not reveal anything meaningful. Now if we take a deep look into the drawing of these ideograms, especially their equivalent in other ancient scripts of the Chinese writing system (Traditional, Bronze, Seal, Liushutong, Oracle bones) then compare them with the animals they represent, you will be surprised that they actually mean something totally relevant. Finally you will see the mystery behind the drawing of these ideograms. Moreover they will you what original animals they stood for.

The Year of the Dragon

The Year of the Dragon
Author: Oliver Chin
Publisher: Immedium
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2011-12
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1597020281

Dominic the dragon befriends a boy named Bo as well as the other eleven animals of the Chinese lunar calendar and helps them enter the annual village boat race. Lists the birth years and characteristics of individuals born in the Chinese Year of the Dragon.

Kontum

Kontum
Author: Thomas P. McKenna
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2011-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813140366

In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. Almost all of the American forces had already withdrawn from Vietnam except for a small group of American advisers to the South Vietnamese armed forces. The 23rd ARVN Infantry Division and its American advisers were sent to defend the provincial capital of Kontum in the Central Highlands. They were surrounded and attacked by three enemy divisions with heavy artillery and tanks but, with the help of air power, managed to successfully defend Kontum and prevent South Vietnam from being cut in half and defeated. Although much has been written about the Vietnam War, little of it addresses either the Easter Offensive or the Battle of Kontum. In Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam, Thomas P. McKenna fills this gap, offering the only in-depth account available of this violent engagement. McKenna, a U.S. infantry lieutenant colonel assigned as a military adviser to the 23rd Division, participated in the battle of Kontum and combines his personal experiences with years of interviews and research from primary sources to describe the events leading up to the invasion and the battle itself. Kontum sheds new light on the actions of U.S. advisers in combat during the Vietnam War. McKenna's book is not only an essential historical resource for America's most controversial war but a personal story of valor and survival.

Vietnam's Final Air Campaign

Vietnam's Final Air Campaign
Author: Stephen Emerson
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2019-08-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 152672846X

An account of the last American bombardments that took place over North Vietnam while peace talks struggled in Paris. Includes maps and photos. On March 30, 1972, some thirty thousand North Vietnamese troops, along with tanks and heavy artillery, surged across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam in the opening round of Hanoi’s Easter Offensive. By early May, South Vietnamese forces were on the ropes and faltering. Without the support of U.S. combat troops—who were in their final stage of withdrawing from the country—the Saigon government was in danger of total collapse and with it any American hope of a negotiated settlement to the war. In response, President Richard Nixon called for an aggressive, sustained bombardment of North Vietnam. Code-named Operation Linebacker I, the interdiction effort sought to stem the flow of men and materiel southward, as well as sever all outside supply lines in the first new bombing of the North Vietnamese heartland in nearly four years. To meet the American air armada, North Vietnamese MiG fighters took to the skies and surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft fire filled the air from May to October over Hanoi and Haiphong. With the failure of its Easter Offensive to achieve military victory, Hanoi reluctantly returned to the negotiating table in Paris. However, as the peace talks teetered on the edge of collapse in December 1972, Nixon played his trump card: Operation Linebacker II. The resulting twelve-day Christmas bombing campaign unleashed the full wrath of American air power. This book tells the story of these decisive campaigns and how they led, finally, to a ceasefire agreement.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried
Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547420293

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

River Rats

River Rats
Author: Ralph Christopher
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2005-03-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 146348853X

The United States Navys fight for control of the waters of Southeast Asia. By far the greatest contribution of the narrative is the insight it provides into the hows and whys of United States involvement in Vietnam, and the attempt of that involvement to bring freedom to those who were unable to achieve it by their own efforts. We see the United States more as a caretaker and less as a policeman in terms of motivation for its involvement half a world away. Andwe see the tremendous price paid by those who served to ensure that freedom ordinary men who, by fate, were thrown together in a strange land, and who fulfilled a part of their destiny, and their Nations, on the brown water. Weldon Bleiler

Break in the Chain—Intelligence Ignored

Break in the Chain—Intelligence Ignored
Author: W. R. Baker
Publisher: Casemate
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2021-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612009921

A riveting combination of war memoir and analysis providing “valuable insights” into the role of military intelligence in Vietnam (International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence). For the first two weeks of the Easter Offensive of 1972, the 571st Military Intelligence Detachment provided the only pertinent collateral intelligence available to American forces. Twice daily, the Detachment provided intelligence to the USS Buchanan (DDG-14), US Navy SEALS, and Special Forces units, including tactical and strategic forecasts of enemy movements, information that was otherwise unavailable to U.S. units and advisors in-country. Bob Baker was an intelligence analyst who was there. In the weeks before the offensive, vital agent reports and verbal warnings by the 571st MI Detachment had been ignored by all the major commands; they were only heeded, and then only very reluctantly, once the offensive began. This refusal to listen to the intelligence explains why no Army or USMC organizations were on-call to recover prisoners discovered or U.S. personnel downed behind enemy lines, as in the BAT-21 incident, as the last two Combat Recon Platoons in Vietnam had been disbanded six weeks before the offensive began. The lessons and experiences of Operation Lam Son 719 in the previous year were ignored, especially with regard to the NVA’s tactical use of tanks and artillery. In his memoir, Baker, the only trained military intelligence analyst with the 571st MI Detachment in 1972, reveals these and other heroics and blunders during a key moment in the Vietnam War.