The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam

Challenges myths, and raises questions about the socialist republic’s political future… groundbreaking… Goscha manages the (not easy) task of showing Vietnam’s complexity without losing the reader with too much detail… quite simply the finest, most readable single-volume history of Vietnam in English’ – Joshua Kurlantzick * Guardian *A vigorous, eye-opening account of a country of great importance to the world, past and future. * Kirkus Reviews *For those who have wanted a distinct and comprehensive overview of Vietnam’s history, this is it. Christopher Goscha has an eye for how history connects through generations and how a country can rise from disasters in a new form, without losing sight of its past – Odd Arne Westad, author of Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750A splendid achievement. Christopher Goscha is one of our leading historians of modern Vietnam, and he shows it in this nuanced, fair-minded, deeply humane book. Destined to be a standard work on the subject – Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s VietnamPowerful and compelling. Vietnam will be of growing importance in the twenty-first-century world, particularly as China and the US rethink their roles in Asia. Christopher Goscha’s book is a brilliant account of that country’s history. Paying careful attention to Vietnamese voices as well as those of colonizers, he constructs a narrative that sets Vietnam in context, and makes it for western readers so much more than a half-remembered event in the Cold War – Rana MitterA perceptive and much needed contribution to our understanding of Vietnam. Christopher Goscha’s prodigious research is equaled only by his intimate understanding of Vietnamese culture, people, and history – Larry Berman, author of Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent

Christopher Goscha is professor of history at the University of Quebec at Montreal. He has spent much of his adult life studying the people, politics and history of Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. He studied at Georgetown University and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (IV me Section, La Sorbonne). He has written extensively about many of the different regions of Indo-China.