Suggested Reading List

Five Favorite Books on Vietnam (and One for the Kids!)

From EMW Executive Director John Anner

Maybe your favorite way to prepare for the exertions of travel is to retire to bed with a good book about your intended destination. Or perhaps your preferred method of visiting foreign lands is through a good book. Either way, this selection of writings on Vietnam will inform and entertain you and, we hope, leave you eager to further explore this fascinating country.

• Windows to Vietnam: A Journey in Pictures and Verse by Scott C. Clarkson
  A remarkable book of photographs and contemporary verse reflecting Vietnam as it appears today: the culture, diversity, and dramatic financial and lifestyle changes among a population nearing 83 million people, more than half of whom are under the age of thirty.
  
  
• Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns by David Lamb
  An extraordinarily rich portrait of postwar Vietnam, a country just emerging from years of political and economic isolation, by a journalist who covered the war and returned 30 years later to cover the peace.
  
  
• Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth by Frances Fitzgerald
  A handsome, informative portrait of present day Vietnam. Frances FitzGerald, who reported on the Vietnam War for the New Yorker, reflects on how the country has changed since the 1970s, and Mary Cross's color photographs vividly illustrate the text.
  
  
• Paradise of the Blind by Duong Thu Huong
  This moving novel captures the hunger, pride, and endurance of ordinary people in a land of intoxicating beauty and  it provides a rare, insightful look into a changing Vietnam.
  
  
• Spring Essence, the Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong
  The subtly risque poems by eighteenth-century concubine Ho Xuan Huong, whose name means Spring Essence, use double entendre and sexual innuendo as a vehicle for social, religious, and poltical commentary.
  
  
• Children of the Dragon by Sherry Garland 
  Passed down through the ages, these colorful folk and fairy tales depict the rich history, tribal customs, explanations of natural phenomena, and values so important to the Vietnamese people. Illustrator Trina Schart Hyman brings these magically entertaining and vividly detailed stories to life.