100 Books Like To Hunt a Holy Man

Norman Lewis is best known for his non-fiction works such as The Golden Land (about Burma) and A Dragon Apparent (about Vietnam). Yet he also wrote a dozen novels that show a great flair for characterisation, dialogue and plot pacing, in addition to his incisive descriptions. A Single Pilgrim tells the story of John Crane, manager of a teak logging company in North Thailand, who revels in “the voluptuousness of routine and civilized triviality”. However, his company’s leases are about to expire and the thought of an end to his Oriental idyll is more than Crane can bear.

I loved this book because Fitzgerald is a journalist, not a historian, so her writing is vivid, fluent, and readable. This is so much more than a history of the war. She plunges into the complex story of Vietnam’s history and culture, setting the stage for America’s unfortunate involvement and the subsequent tragic events.
Fitzgerald first went to Vietnam in 1966, and, when this book came out in 1972, it was the first history of Vietnam written by an American. The New York Times called it “A compassionate and penetrating account of the collision of two societies that remain untranslatable to one another.” Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award, it was a bestseller.

This is a fascinating study of the creation, evolution, and ultimate success of the All-Volunteer Army after Vietnam. Bailey maintains her historical objectivity even when dealing with controversial and emotional subjects such as race, the role of women, and the Army’s commitment to combat. As she explores this traumatic institutional shift from war to peace, she skillfully interweaves the experiences of individuals into the story. The result is a well-written, enjoyable work that both meets the highest standards of scholarship and is enlightening and entertaining.

The author subtitles this book, which I read in the hardback, The 1972 Easter Offensive America’s Last Vietnam Battle. To me, I did not consider this to be the last American battle in Vietnam as this battle was conducted by the South Vietnamese forces with assistance only from US Advisors, helicopters, and Air Force aircraft.

I found the book to be an excellent account of the actions of US advisors and helicopter crews and certainly informative on the future use of our military in an advisory role. I was amazed at the courage displayed by all, but especially by US Marine advisors and US Army advisors with Airborne and Ranger units.

I had an opportunity to discuss the book with one of the Marine advisors, and he verified the accuracy of the events in the book that he had experienced. 

As the representative of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam at the Paris Peace Conference, Nguyen Thi Binh inspired women’s rights activists around the world. Charged with forwarding efforts toward people-to-people diplomacy, Binh met with antiwar activists from all over the world, including the United States, as she negotiated for peace through official channels. With Binh’s high-level position, the reality of her experiences have often been obscured and misconstrued by people on all sides of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Thus, her memoir provides much-needed insight into her family background, her role in resisting France, her leadership in the National Liberation Front during the U.S. war, and her position in the Vietnamese government following the fall of Saigon.

This book is hard to find and only available in Vietnam currently.

This book gives an early perspective on Vietnam’s reforms and economic growth. It follows and complements a book by Le Dang Doanh published by the National Australian University in Australia in 1992 written from a similar perspective.

The book is based largely on Vietnamese early sources of data and information. It presents an analysis of the main features of economic policy reforms in Vietnam, their socioeconomic impact, and several major theoretical and practical problems Vietnam faced on its path to development.

Micus’s poetry awed me with its beauty and precision of language. Because he published this book long after Vietnam, many of the poems confront that long “after” which comes with war: purpose, the search for community, PTSD and suicide, and moral injury.

I find myself going back to many of these poems to experience his remarkable voice.

As a female journalist who has lived and worked abroad, including in sometimes unsafe situations but excluding war, I was drawn to Miller’s story about covering the Vietnam War. In 1970 young American women were not supposed to go to Vietnam. They were supposed to get married, and Miller did—to a member of the military whose job proves her ticket to Vietnam.

As one of the rare female reporters in Vietnam, Miller captured stories her male colleagues couldn’t or wouldn’t cover such as how young Vietnamese girls were often tricked into the sex trade. An outsider in the “old boys club” of news and war Miller is able to understand better than her male colleagues how the war is impacting the locals who have in some ways been made outsiders in their own country.

I love these passionate and powerful poems by a former Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam.

Hood uses humor, wit, and an attention to the world—both in combat and back home—that’s unlike much “war” poetry out there. He takes us into what he calls “the dark of the word” and brings us out to the light.

The Crystal Messenger is a delicate melancholy tale about a girl who observes from her window the comings and goings of her family and the community around her.

Her sister is the local beauty who is wooed by many but cannot find the poet that she truly loves and she is courted by a dwarf who is a member of the communist party. The prose of this novella is like candy floss, it can melt on your tongue and I aspire to use language this way.