Read this in July 2018.
I was 16 during the Tet Offensive and the battle at Hue in 1968. I knew people who were there. I had a friend die on that battlefield. There was one scene in the book I remember someone describing to me there experience that was very similar to that incident in the book. Later I stood on a street corner in Philly listening to someone in that battle talk about the feeling of getting shot at and thinking you were going to die.
Viet Nam was always on our minds back then and a few months later there was the first draft lottery where my draft number associated with my birthday was 10.
Reading this book brought back lots of memories of that time. It was on the TV news every day. This was the time when we all realized for sure that the government had been lying about the war all along and we were not ever going to win it. Viet Nam was the defining issue of my generation and Tet made it clear that the war was going to be going on for a lot longer.
It was interesting reading the details of that campaign by the Vietnamese army to drive out the Americans and the intense building by building fighting by the Americans to retake the city. The author provides an authoritative account of the battle provided by interviews and documentation from both sides of the conflict. It is also a very well written book and reads like a story being told rather than a historical academic tome.
I've read about twenty books about the Viet Nam War.
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