Loved the recommended books as I own them and found them very useful when traveling to Vietname.A few other suggestions:

1.The tunnels of cu chi..Tom Mangold and John Penvcate

(After climbing inside these tunnels, I desperately wanted to learn more)

2.The Sacred Willow-4 generaions in the life of a vietnamese family by Duongvan Mai Elliot

3.Going after Caccaito and The things they Carried by Tim O"Brien

I would add to the list:

David Maraniss's "They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967."

"Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975," by A.J. Langguth.

Michael Norman's "These Good Men: Friendships Forged From War."

A 4000 year history, one of the oldest and most diverse cultures in the world, and 40 years after a 10 year war, we STILL think its all about us . . . . These are all excellent books, but they are not really about Viet Nam. They are about Americans in Viet Nam. Its the literary equivalent of a date with a narcissist: “But enough about me, let’s talk about you! What do you think of me?”

How about a novel, written by someone Vietnamese, in Viet Nam, that is not about Americans in Viet Nam? There are a number of excellent ones that have been translated, but I would recommend starting with Paradise of the Blind, or any other novel by Duong Thu Huong. Some of the symbolic nuances might be lost in the cultural translation, but the imagery and feel is still exquisitely Vietnamese.

Philip Caputo's, A Rumor of War and Tim Obrien's, The Things They Carried. Both classics. As well as The Short-Timers, by Gustav Hasford. All classics. The deal solely with the war, but must reads bu anyone who is interested in the conflict.

Nice comment Lisa. I could not agree more. As an a non-American who lived in Viet Nam for three years and a ten year relationship with the country that lasts till this day, I get so frustrated American's co-opting of the country. Even American writers focused on modern-day Viet Nam are so self-conscious about being an American-in-Vi-et-nam. The rest of the country is way past it. Maybe they could all move on to that other ill-considered foreign relations fiasco called Eye-Raq!

Excellent history of the country from its origin through the end of the American war.

For some reason, I've been seeing this "It's a country, not a war" phrase in a dozen places lately. It's as though a public relations agency has been given a budget to spread it far and wide.

Everybody's sick and tired of the Vietnam War. Me too. It's been analyzed to death. I have a friend, a fellow American combat vet who has decided he wants to write a screenplay about his experiences. I told him he's 30 years too late. Anything he could ever come up with has already been turned in to cash and trash.

"Do you ever want to go back," sometimes people ask me. Not really. It's a long way to go just to get another unwanted lesson in the fact that I'm not 20 anymore, I'm almost 60. Nothing is the same. What would I find there?

Only echoes. I saw a Google Image satellite photo of my old base camp up country this morning. It's reverted back to jungle again. It exists only in my mind. There's nothing left to see there.

As Lisa wrote: "These are all excellent books, but they are not really about Viet Nam. They are about Americans in Viet Nam. Its the literary equivalent of a date with a narcissist."

Well that's kind of harsh, but it's true. Americans can't help but see Vietnam through the kalaidoscope of impressions and images they grew up with. Would books by Vietnamese about Vietnam would be any different? Books written by Vietnamese, especially about their side of the "American War" as they call it, are likely to contain their narcissistic confabulations instead of ours.

It's up to the "victors" to write the history.

Cases in point: I've been getting first-hand reports from young friends, travelers, backpackers, who have come back from Vietnam over the past several years. Even though they don't know each other, nearly all have injected "It's a country, not a war" into the first ten minutes of the conversation. Is that from a brochure or something?

In addition, it doesn't take long before I'm hearing a strangely familiar lecture from my own young countrymen on how the American army was defeated in Vietnam by the brave and noble Vietnamese people driving the evil "me" out of their country. They tell me about the tour they were given of the famous Cu Chi tunnels and how the entire military might of the United States couldn't dislodge the determined patriots.

Read any of my letters here at Salon about what kind of veteran I am and where I stand. I'm about as un-Republican and un-right wing as they come. But still, it gets under my skin to hear 20-somethings cheering my old foes and celebrating with them over the dead bodies of the young men that I shared this tragic piece of history with.

We were 20-somethings back then too. We got drafted, many of us, and we weren't in a position to say no unless we wanted to flee our country or go to jail. I can't speak for them, but I fought the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong for one reason only: To save my young ass. Not for flag, not for country, but because I wasn't politically connected enough, or rich enough to get out of it. If you can't get out of it, get into it. And I did.

When I came home, I joined with John Kerry and thousands of other vets who wanted to bring the madness of Vietnam to an end. I like to think, and I believe it could be proven, that it was the returning Vietnam Vets protesting the war that finally pushed the American people to the tipping point that the politicians could no longer ignore. For our sincere efforts, we are labeled traitors by the flag-waving hyper-patriots and used as convenient tools by those on the Left.

I've gotten used to that. But what has caught me by surprise is that three decades later I would see young travelers coming back from Vietnam babbling about the wonderful Communist victory and the brave, noble NVA and VC forces. If they were so wonderful, why did so many Vietnamese leave everything behind and take to the sea to get the hell out of there. I guess the tour guides didn't tell them the part about how they massacred thousands of their own people and sent thousands more to die in hard labor "re-education" camps after their glorious victory.

If Vietnam is a country to you, not a war, that's fine. But for me, and I suspect many thousands of other Vietnam Vets, it is and will remain a place where we left our innocence behind, a place of sorrow, of pride, of courage, of appreciation for those who shared our ordeal.

When the last great-grandchild of the last Vietnam veteran dies, then Vietnam will be a country, not a war.