Christensen's experience as a military policeman (MP) in a city of millions at a time when chaos and fear reigned. As a 23-year-old from a small town in Washington State, the author was plunged into a chaotic city of brawling servicemen, prostitutes, racial violence, enemy rockets, riots, and death. It was a place that would give him a unique opportunity to see up close a different side of the Vietnam War and its effect on the human condition. Nearly 80 stories collectively convey the author’s experiences and his arc—from naive to jaded, angry, confused, anxious, and bone-weary exhausted—that is representative of so many GIs who served in the Vietnam War as well as those veterans of today’s conflicts around the globe. * “A true warrior and a gifted and prolific author, Loren gives the reader a deep and illuminating insight into his experience that changed his life and subsequently led him toward helping others through his writing. Policing Saigon is a powerful book.” Lt. Col. Dave Grossman * Military Policeman Loren Christensen takes the reader on a gritty, moving, and intense ride-a-along in Saigon, Vietnam. K.F., Afghanistan War veteran Table of Contents Introduction PART ONE: THE FIRST FEW DAYS Chap 1: Flying there Chap 2: Door gunners and policing for cigarette butts Chap 3: Welcome to Saigon Chap 4: Python Chap 5: Culture shock Chap 6: Dead men’s gear PART TWO: "ROUTINE DAYS" Chap 7: Day after day Chap 8: EOD Chap 9: Skylight Chap 10: Cobra Chap 11: Bob Hope Chap 12: Papa-san and the ammo truck Chap 13: Dead mama-san Chap 14: Jail window Chap 15: “Karate number one” Chap 16: Sampson Chap 17: 100-P alley Chap 18: 200-P alley Chap 19: The swimming pool Chap 20: “Dance to the Music” Chap 21: Drugs Chap 22: Tracer rounds Chap 23: Puff the magic dragon Chap 24: Almost a coup Chap 25: Vietnam blues Chap 26: Tension Chap 27: A shaky fork Chap 28: Illusions of relief Chap 29: Korean Marines Chap 30: AFVN radio: “Goooooood morning, Vietnaaaaaam” Chap 31: “I’m not a crook” Chap 32: Running Code 3 Chap 33: Fire Chap 34: Riot Chap 35: Power and rank: a deadly mix Chap 36: The vision Chap 37: Screams Chap 38: Meyerkord Hotel Chap 39: Resisting arrest Chap 40: Letters Chap 41: One GI who went home and came right back PART THREE: LOSING IT Chap 42: Silencer Chap 43: Hangman Chap 44: Johnny Walker Black Chap 45: Escaped prisoner Chap 46: The punch Chap 47: Death of the spirit Chap 48: Grenade PART FOUR: PROSTITUTES Chap 49: “Boom-boom number one” Chap 50: Clap Chap 51: Peter PART FIVE: THE INDIGENOUS Chap 52: A fellow martial artist Chap 53: A most excellent shot Chap 54: “Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout me” Chap 55: China girl Chap 56: Date night Chap 57: The old gravedigger Chap 58: Altered states: the Buddhist temple Chap 59: Dog sex and an alligator baby PART SIX: STREET CHILDREN Chap 60: A Tu Do paperboy Chap 61: Cemetery k

    Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book, the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal for Nonfiction, and the PEN Center West Award for Best Research NonfictionTwenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, historian and journalist A. J. Langguth delivers an authoritative account of the war based on official documents not available earlier and on new reporting from both the American and Vietnamese perspectives. In Our Vietnam, Langguth takes us inside the waffling and deceitful White Houses of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon; documents the ineptness and corruption of our South Vietnamese allies; and recounts the bravery of soldiers on both sides of the war. With its broad sweep and keen insights, Our Vietnam brings together the kaleidoscopic events and personalities of the war into one engrossing and unforgettable narrative.

    A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, journalist Megan K. Stack, a twenty-five-year-old national correspondent for the "Los Angeles Times," was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she traveled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world and laboring to tell its stories. "Every Man in This Village Is a Liar" is Megan K. Stack's riveting account of what she saw in the combat zones and beyond. She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy. She reports from under bombardment in Lebanon; records the raw pain of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq; and, one by one, marks the deaths and disappearances of those she interviews. Beautiful, savage, and unsettling, "Every Man in This Village Is a Liar" is a memoir about the wars of the twenty-first century that readers will long remember.

    In this game there’s no second place, only the quick and the dead.”   In Vietnam, Mobile Guerrilla Force conducted unconventional operations against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. Armed with silencer-equipped MK-II British Sten guns, M-16s, M-79s, and M-60 machine guns, the men of the Mobile Guerrilla Force operated in the steamy, triple-canopy jungle owned by the NVA and VC, destroying base camps, ambushing patrols, and gathering the intelligence that General Westmoreland desperately needed.   In 1967, James Donahue was a Special Forces medic and assistant platoon leader assigned to the Mobile Guerrilla Force and their fiercely anti-Communist Cambodian freedom fighters. Their mission: to locate the 271st Main Force Viet Cong Regiment so they could be engaged and destroyed by the 1st Infantry Division.   Now, with the brutal, unflinching honesty only an eye witness could possess, Donahue relives the adrenaline rush of firefights, air strikes, human wave attacks, ambushes, and attacks on enemy base camps. Following the operation the surviving Special Forces members of the Mobile Guerrilla Force were decorated by Major General John Hay, Commanding General, 1st Infantry Division.From the Paperback edition.

    The author describes how, with no French language ability, he approached recruiters for the French Foreign Legion in Paris and the demanding selection process that followed. When he was accepted, he and other prospective legionnaires were sent to Southern France to begin the harsh recruit training course. The mix of different nationalities and backgrounds among his fellows was enormous. New members are traditionally allowed to change their identities - the author chose to alter his age becoming 28 not 38! Elite paratrooper training followed in Corsica before the author earned his 'wings'.The FFL is never far from the front line and we read of challenging active service in former French colonies in Africa as well as during the First Gulf War, evicting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and operations in Bosnia and Sarajevo.This is a completely authentic book that lifts the veil of mystery and myth and reveals much about the realities of service in the Foreign Legion. The author is not given to exaggeration - there is no need for it. A gripping read.

    Ho Chi Minh's epic life helped shape the twentieth century. But never before has he been the subject of a major biography. Now William Duiker has compiled an astonishing work of history that fills this immense void. A New York Times Notable Book and one of the Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2000 - now in paperback!

    Taylor Jr. and his brother Marines are assembled into a new reaction force that is immediately tested in the fire of a bloody conflict known as Operation Beaver Cage. After a traumatic first fight, they push through back-to-back operations with little time to rest or reflect. Those who survive will return home ensnared by everlasting memories of a real, but entirely surreal nightmare. Now after more than fifty years of holding everything in, Taylor shares his experience in explicit and often horrific detail and with a reverent honor for those Marines who did not live to tell the tale.Taylor reveals what it truly means to walk the path of a warrior, to sacrifice, and to live a lifetime with the memories of a war—seeking answers to the question, “Was it worth it?"

    Army Special Operations Blackhawk over Somalia, Michael Durant was shot down with a rocket-propelled grenade on October 3, 1993. With devastating injuries, he was taken prisoner by a Somali warlord. With revealing insight and emotion, he tells the story of what he saw, how he survived, and the courage and heroism that only soldiers under fire could ever know.

    For more than thirty years, virtually the only people who knew about the Hill Fights were the Marines who fought them. Now, for the first time, the full story has been pieced together by acclaimed Vietnam War historian Edward F. Murphy, whose definitive analysis admirably fills this significant gap in Vietnam War literature. Based on first-hand interviews and documentary research, Murphy’s deeply informed narrative history is the only complete account of the battles, their origins, and their aftermath.The Marines at the isolated Khe Sanh Combat Base were tasked with monitoring the strategically vital Ho Chi Minh trail as it wound through the jungles in nearby Laos. Dominated by high hills on all sides, the combat base had to be screened on foot by the Marine infantrymen while crack, battle-hardened NVA units roamed at will through the high grass and set up elaborate defenses on steep, sun-baked overlooks.Murphy traces the bitter account of the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh from the outset in 1966, revealing misguided decisions and strategies from above, and capturing the chain of hill battles in stark detail. But the Marines themselves supply the real grist of the story; it is their recollections that vividly re-create the atmosphere of desperation, bravery, and relentless horror that characterized their combat. Often outnumbered and outgunned by a hidden enemy—and with buddies lying dead or wounded beside them—these brave young Americans fought on.The story of the Marines at Khe Sanh in early 1967 is a microcosm of the Corps’s entire Vietnam War and goes a long way toward explaining why their casualties in Vietnam exceeded, on a Marine-in-combat basis, even the tremendous losses the Leathernecks sustained during their ferocious Pacific island battles of World War II. The Hill Fights is a damning indictment of those responsible for the lives of these heroic Marines. Ultimately, the high command failed them, their tactics failed them, and their rifles failed them. Only the Marines themselves did not fail. Under fire, trapped in a hell of sudden death meted out by unseen enemies, they fought impossible odds with awesome courage and uncommon valor.From the Hardcover edition.

    Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975—has eluded us.Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam’s conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview.Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.

    From dodging enemy ground fire and RPGs, to constant mortar and rocket attacks on his base, Colonel Cory stared down the enemy to bring his fellow soldiers’ home.Join Colonel Cory as he recounts some of the most intense helicopter and ground combat of the Vietnam war from the eyes of a man who spent two combat tours there. From being shot down by enemy fire, to leading his air crew to repel an enemy assault, Colonel Cory’s firsthand accounts of the Vietnam War are awe inspiring. Awarded the Silver Star, and two Bronze Stars for Valor, Cory’s hair-raising accounts of what it was like to fly over the Jungles of Vietnam will make you feel as if you are right there with him. Grab your copy of this gripping, true-life story of an American war hero today!! Praise for Undaunted Valor – “If you ever wanted to know what it’s like to fly a helicopter in combat or what goes through the minds of those who do, you have to read this book. Incredible story of an American Hero!” – Author James Rosone of the Red Storm Series

    Fraser was only 19 when he arrived there in the war's final year, and he offers a first-hand glimpse at the camaraderie, danger, and satisfactions of service. A substantial Epilogue, occasioned by the 50th anniversary of VJ-Day in 1995, adds poignancy to a volume that eminent military historian John Keegan described as "one of the great personal memoirs of the Second World War."

    In a book that inspired the Amazon Original series starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Malcolm McDowell, oboist Blair Tindall recounts her decades-long professional career as a classical musician--from the recitals and Broadway orchestra performances to the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth in the backbiting New York classical music scene, where musicians trade sexual favors for plum jobs and assignments in orchestras across the city. Tindall and her fellow journeymen musicians often play drunk, high, or hopelessly hungover, live in decrepit apartments, and perform in hazardous conditions-- working-class musicians who schlep across the city between low-paying gigs, without health-care benefits or retirement plans, a stark contrast to the rarefied experiences of overpaid classical musician superstars. An incisive, no-holds-barred account, Mozart in the Jungle is the first true, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on backstage and in the Broadway pit.

    But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard.Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp.When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice.

    When French paratroopers landed in the jungle on the border between Vietnam and Laos, the Vietnamese quickly isolated the French force and confronted them at their jungle base in a small place called Dien Bien Phu. The hunters-the French army-had become the hunted, desperately defending their out-gunned base. The siege in the jungle wore on as defeat loomed for the French. Eventually the French were depleted, demoralized, and destroyed. As they withdrew, the country was ominously divided at U.S. insistence, creating the short-lived Republic of South Vietnam for which 55,000 Americans would die in the next twenty years.