A Ohio University Press Book
By Hữu Ngọc
Edited by Lady Borton and Elizabeth F. Collins
“Việt Nam offers a sweeping introduction to Vietnamese history and culture through a collection of essays selected from Wandering through Vietnamese Culture (2004 … [It] moves from the ancient to the colonial to the contemporary, runs the cultural gamut from village puppetry to classical opera, and details cultural, linguistic, regional, and biographical histories. It both promotes and creates the idea of a national culture, which Hữu Ngọc considers essential to Vietnam’s past and future. Summing up: Essential.”
CHOICE
“Hữu Ngọc is an engaging and brilliant writer, and the brevity of his vignettes are just enough to spark an interest in the topic for a reader unfamiliar with the material. Even scholars of Vietnam will find something to learn in this volume.”
Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox, Pacific Affairs
During his twenty-year tenure as a columnist for Việt Nam News, Hà Nội’s English-language newspaper, Hữu Ngọc charmed and invigorated an international readership hungry for straightforward but elegant entrees into understanding Vietnamese culture. The essays were originally collected in the massive Wandering through Vietnamese Culture. With Viet Nam: Tradition and Change, Ohio University Press presents a selection from these many treasures, which are perfectly suited to students of Vietnamese culture and travelers seeking an introduction to the country’s rich history, culture, and daily life.
With extraordinary linguistic ability and a prodigious memory, Hữu Ngọc is among Việt Nam’s keenest observers of and writers about traditional Vietnamese culture and recent history. The author’s central theme—that all tradition is change through acculturation—twines through each of the book’s ten sections, which contain Hữu Ngọc’s ideas on Vietnamese religion, literature, history, exemplary figures, and more. Taken on its own, each brief essay is an engaging discussion of key elements of Vietnamese culture and the history of an issue confronting Việt Nam today.
Hữu Ngọc (1918–) is retired director of Việt Nam’s foreign languages publishing house and editor of Vietnamese Studies, Hà Nội's semi-scholarly quarterly published since 1964. His Sunday newspaper columns remain reader favorites. During the past twenty years, Hữu Ngọc’s lecture, “3,000 Years of Vietnamese History in One Hour,” has entranced 20,000 foreign visitors to Việt Nam. More info →
Retail price:
$28.95 ·
Save 20% ($23.16)
Retail price:
$70.00 ·
Save 20% ($56)
US and Canada only
Availability and price vary according to vendor.
Share 
Permission to reprint
Permission
to photocopy or include in a course pack
via Copyright Clearance
Center
Click or tap on a subject heading to sign up to be notified when new related books come out.
Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, № 128
Paperback
978-0-89680-302-2
Retail price: $28.95,
S.
Release date: August 2016
386 pages
·
5½ × 8½ in.
Rights: World (exclusive in North America, United Kingdom, and Continental Europe) except ASEAN
Hardcover
978-0-89680-301-5
Retail price: $70.00,
S.
Release date: August 2016
386 pages
·
5½ × 8½ in.
Rights: World (exclusive in North America, United Kingdom, and Continental Europe) except ASEAN
Electronic
978-0-89680-493-7
Release date: August 2016
386 pages
Rights: World
The Red Earth
A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation
By Binh Tu Tran
·
Edited by David G. Marr
·
Translation by John Spragens
Phu Rieng was one of many French rubber plantations in colonial Vietnam; Tran Tu Binh was one of 17,606 laborers brought to work there in 1927, and his memoir is a straightforward, emotionally searing account of how one Vietnamese youth became involved in revolutionary politics. The connection between this early experience and later activities of the author becomes clear as we learn that Tran Tu Binh survived imprisonment on Con Son island to help engineer the general uprising in Hanoi in 1945.
Asian History · Memoir · World and Comparative History · Vietnam · Asian Studies · Southeast Asian Studies
Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War
By John A. Wood
In the decades since the Vietnam War, veteran memoirs have influenced Americans’ understanding of the conflict. Yet few historians or literary scholars have scrutinized how the genre has shaped the nation’s collective memory of the war and its aftermath.
American History · Military History · Memoir · American Studies · Vietnam
Sign up to be notified when new Social Science Essays titles come out.
We will only use your email address to notify you of new titles in the subject area(s) you follow. We will never share your information with third parties.
