Vietnam War Books You Need To Read

Heart-wrenching, fragmented, raw, former North Vietnamese soldier Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there. Kien, a lone survivor from the Glorious 27th Youth brigade of the Vietcong, revisits the haunting sites of battles and relives a parade of horrors, as he grapples with his ghosts, his alcoholism, and attempts to arrange his life in writing. Originally published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, non-ideological tone, Ninh’s now classic work has won worldwide acclaim and become an international bestseller.

Award-winning author and journalist Wil Haygood explores how the Vietnam War became a mirror for the struggle of Black Americans — fighting for freedom abroad while demanding equality at home — and a powerful lens through which to understand the racial and political divides that continue to shape American life. The War Within a War is both sweeping history and intimate revelation, capturing the tragedies and triumphs, the honor and hypocrisies, the courage and cowardice that shaped an era and whose repercussions resonate today.

With the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the U.S. war in Vietnam ended, but the refugee crisis was only beginning. Among the millions of people who fled Vietnam by boat were Vinh Nguyen, along with his mother and siblings, and his father, who left separately and then mysteriously vanished. Decades later, Nguyen goes looking for the story of his father. What he discovers is a sea of questions drifting above sunken truths. To come to terms with the past, Nguyen must piece together the debris of history with family stories that have been scattered across generations and continents, kept for decades in broken hearts and guarded silences.

The moving story of how a small group of people — Vietnam veterans, scientists, Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners — forced the U.S. government to take responsibility for the ongoing horrors — agent orange and unexploded munitions — inflicted on the Vietnamese. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.

A Marine’s searing and intimate story — “A passionate, fascinating, and deeply humane memoir of both war and of the hard work of citizenship and healing in war’s aftermath. A superb addition to our understanding of the Vietnam War, and of its lessons” (Phil Klay, author of Redeployment).

Scorched Earth is the first book to chronicle the effects of chemical warfare on the Vietnamese people and their environment, where, even today, more than 3 million people — including 500,000 children — are sick and dying from birth defects, cancer, and other illnesses that can be directly traced to Agent Orange/dioxin exposure. Weaving first-person accounts with original research, Vietnam War scholar Fred A. Wilcox examines long-term consequences for future generations, laying bare the ongoing monumental tragedy in Vietnam, and calls for the United States government to finally admit its role in chemical warfare in Vietnam.

In 1971 former Cold War hard-liner Daniel Ellsberg made history by releasing the Pentagon Papers — a 7,000-page top-secret study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam — to the New York Times and The Washington Post. The document set in motion a chain of events that ended not only the Nixon presidency but the Vietnam War. In this remarkable memoir, Ellsberg describes in dramatic detail the two years he spent in Vietnam as a U.S. State Department observer, and how he came to risk his career and freedom to expose the deceptions and delusions that shaped three decades of American foreign policy. The story of one man’s exploration of conscience, Secrets is also a portrait of America at a perilous crossroad.

Ken Burns is one of the most acclaimed and well-known documentarians of his generation, best known for his meticulous and intimate examinations of subjects from jazz to baseball to the Civil War. Based on the celebrated PBS television series, The Vietnam War may be his most ambitious. Drawing on hours and hours of interviews with U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers, their families, former P.O.W’s, anti-war protestors, and many others, Burns is attempting the definitive account of the Vietnam War. This book, a collaboration with historian Geoffrey C. Ward, is the film’s companion.

Originally published in 1967, Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? is not only essential reading on the Vietnam War, but a significant piece of the American literary landscape. Through the recounting of a father and son’s hunting trip in the wilds of Alaska, Mailer systematically chips away this initially benign facade to reveal the conflicting emotions and creeping disillusionment that came to define a generation.

Originally published in 1977, Dispatches remains one of the finest examples of war reportage. In it, war correspondent Michael Herr recounts the fervor and horror of war — as well as the day-to-day lives of soldiers in a combat zone — in unflinching detail through stark, eloquent prose. Dispatches was an instant classic and provided inspiration for some of the finest films on the Vietnam War, most notably Apocalypse Now. Decades later, it remains a must-read.

A Bright Shining Lie is a sprawling, powerful account of the peril and folly of the Vietnam War. The recipient of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, Neil Sheeha’s book stands among the best accounts of the war, bringing to light the experiences of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann who arrived in Vietnam in 1962 and witnessed firsthand the corruption, deception, arrogance, and incompetence that would ultimately define the Vietnam War.

Truong Nhu Tang first met Ho Chi Minh as a student in Paris. Tang would serve as a soldier in the Vietcong, eventually rising to the position of Minister of Justice and an important figure in the Vietcong’s so-called fight for liberation. However, by the end of the war, Tang had to fled to Paris, disillusioned with the cause he once championed and living in exile. A Vietcong Memoir is a remarkably candid account of his experiences and a necessary perspective on the war.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is a powerful and poignant account of what life was like for many Vietnamese during the war years. Le Ly Hayslip was 12 years old when the first U.S. helicopters landed in her village. She was forced to serve in the Vietcong before being captured and held by government forces. Ultimately Hayslip fled to America. This memoir intersperses her return to Vietnam years later against the horrifying account of her wartime experience.

If you were to read only one book on the Vietnam War, The Vietnam Reader should be it. Edited by Stewart O’Nan, The Vietnam Reader is a powerful collection covering the breadth of the Vietnam War and its impact. It draws from the entire spectrum of media concerning the war — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, song lyrics, film, photography, etc. — to present a kaleidoscopic and immensely readable view of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.

The image of a nine-year-old girl, badly burned by napalm, fleeing her village in South Vietnam is one of the most unforgettable images of the Vietnam War. It was a tragic and painful depiction of the very human toll of war. The Girl in the Picture not only tells the story of how the photo came to be, but also of Kim Phuc — the girl in the picture — and the devastating impact of the war on Vietnamese civilians.

In November 1965, some 450 soldiers under the command of then Colonel Harold Moore were dropped into a small clearing in the la Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by approximately 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. The ensuing battle, the first major battle of the Vietnam War, was a savage and brutal affair. We Were Soldiers Once … and Young is a remarkable telling of military history. It also served as the basis for the 2002 film We Were Soldiers.