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The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam
The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam
Nov 6, 2024 3:41 PM

Author:Christopher Goscha

The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S JOHN K. FAIRBANK PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 2017

'This is the finest single-volume history of Vietnam in English. It challenges myths, and raises questions about the socialist republic's political future' Guardian

'Powerful and compelling. Vietnam will be of growing importance in the twenty-first-century world, particularly as China and the US rethink their roles in Asia. Christopher Goscha's book is a brilliant account of that country's history.' - Rana Mitter

'A vigorous, eye-opening account of a country of great importance to the world, past and future' - Kirkus Reviews

Over the centuries the Vietnamese have beenboth colonizers themselves and the victims of colonization by others. Their country expanded, shrunk, split and sometimes disappeared, often under circumstances far beyond their control. Despite these often overwhelming pressures, Vietnam has survived as one of Asia's most striking and complex cultures.

As more and more visitors come to this extraordinary country, there has been for some years a need for a major history - a book which allows the outsider to understand the many layers left by earlier emperors, rebels, priests and colonizers. Christopher Goscha's new work amply fills this role. Drawing on a lifetime of thinking about Indo-China, he has created a narrative which is consistently seen from 'inside' Vietnam but never loses sight of the connections to the 'outside'. As wave after wave of invaders - whether Chinese, French, Japanese or American - have been ultimately expelled, we see the terrible cost to the Vietnamese themselves. Vietnam's role in one of the Cold War's longest conflicts has meant that its past has been endlessly abused for propaganda purposes and it is perhaps only now that the events which created the modern state can be seen from a truly historical perspective.

Christopher Goscha draws on the latest research and discoveries in Vietnamese, French and English. His book is a major achievement, describing both the grand narrative of Vietnam's story but also the byways, curiosities, differences, cultures and peoples that have done so much over the centuries to define the many versions of Vietnam.

Reviews

Challenges myths, and raises questions about the socialist republic's political future... groundbreaking... Goscha manages the (not easy) task of showing Vietnam's complexity without losing the reader with too much detail... quite simply the finest, most readable single-volume history of Vietnam in English'

—— Joshua Kurlantzick , Guardian

A vigorous, eye-opening account of a country of great importance to the world, past and future.

—— Kirkus Reviews

For those who have wanted a distinct and comprehensive overview of Vietnam's history, this is it. Christopher Goscha has an eye for how history connects through generations and how a country can rise from disasters in a new form, without losing sight of its past

—— Odd Arne Westad, author of Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750

A splendid achievement. Christopher Goscha is one of our leading historians of modern Vietnam, and he shows it in this nuanced, fair-minded, deeply humane book. Destined to be a standard work on the subject

—— Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam

Powerful and compelling. Vietnam will be of growing importance in the twenty-first-century world, particularly as China and the US rethink their roles in Asia. Christopher Goscha's book is a brilliant account of that country's history. Paying careful attention to Vietnamese voices as well as those of colonizers, he constructs a narrative that sets Vietnam in context, and makes it for western readers so much more than a half-remembered event in the Cold War

—— Rana Mitter

A perceptive and much needed contribution to our understanding of Vietnam. Christopher Goscha's prodigious research is equaled only by his intimate understanding of Vietnamese culture, people, and history

—— Larry Berman, author of Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent

An intense meditation on what it means to be a women and walk out in the world. Flaneuse encourages its readers to lace up their shoes and go for a walk. Elkin lets the reader become a companion to many women who have thought seriously about the relationship between a woman and the path she chooses to tread.

—— Erica Wagner , New Statesman

I've been waiting for years to see the history of women walkers in the city added to the critical literature of the flaneur--and here, in Lauren Elkin's really smart and lovely book

—— Vivian Gornick

Engaging, inspiring and vigorous... The persuasiveness with which she urges us to rethink and expand our understanding of the art of flânerie, together with the force of her insights and the strength and weight of her voice, leaves us with a contribution to the field that feels singular. Buy it, read it, talk about it. And carry it with you in your mind when you next go walking in the city.

—— Matthew Adams , The National

Flâneuse offers a rich engagement with the “psychogeography” of 20th-century literature and the contemporary city… A rich, rewarding pedalogue

—— Martin Doyle and Sara Keating , Irish Times

In her richly evocative and absorbing debut, cultural critic Elkin homes in on the female version of the flaneur . . . In this insightful mix of cultural history and memoir, Elkin emerges at the protagonist as she mines her personal journey from the suburbs of Long Island to her current home in Paris

—— Publishers Weekly

Marvellously eclectic and erudite

—— Bookseller

An appealing blend of memoir, scholarship, and cultural criticism . . . Elkin's own story runs through the text like a luminous thread. She tells us the woman-in-the-street stories of Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, George Sand, Sophie Calle, Agnès Varda, and Martha Gellhorn, but all sorts of other cultural figures appear, including Barthes, Rilke, Baudelaire, Hemingway, Derrida, Dickens, and numerous others . . . Enlightening walks through cities, cultural history, and a writer's heart and soul

—— Kirkus

This is a book about wandering women, the author included, who build relationships with their cities by walking through them . . . Women can and do make feminist statements simply by strolling through their stomping grounds; Elkin creates an interesting and inarguable case for this. She, too, is a wanderer and provides compelling anecdotes about her own journeys, interspersed with those of literary heavy-hitters George Sand, Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and others . . . This is ultimately a celebration of women. You'll want to take a stroll by the end

—— Library Journal

Inspiring

—— Psychologies

Told in a light and humorous way, Elkin’s cultural meander provides plenty of food for thought.

—— France

A fascinating way to write about George Sand, Virginia Woolf and others, plus Elkin’s own artistic explorations of Paris, London, Venice and Tokyo. It makes us all want to be London wanderers.

—— Culture Whisper, Book of the Year

Elkin delivers a prococative yet light and humorous read, mingling her own memories with those of the female artists she portrays.

—— French Property News

With this book, Elkin hopes to track down the female equivalent – the flâneuse – to ‘see where a woman might fit into the cityscape’… It is a timely effort: in the Trump era of manspreading and male privilege, it is especially vital that we pay attention to notions of gendered space. Elkin’s prose is wry, insightful and saturated with detail

—— Sam Ford , Totally Dublin

Delightfully meandering.

—— Daily Telegraph

Elkin is a beguiling writer, and resolutely female, her sentences doing what Virginia Woolf wanted women's sentences to do, which is to "hold back the male flood"… Flâneuse is a riposte to all that macho stomping about… Flâneuse is so rich with shining trinkets and wise thoughts that not a single page disappoints or bores. It's that rare thing these days - a work of feminism which is enthused by literature and art and ideas rather than pop culture.

—— Ellis O'Hanlon , Irish Independent

Elkin explores the history of people and places in astonishing detail. She writes with a passion and personality that creates the kind of familiarity which encourages us to believe that the women she studies were close friends of hers… Elkin's first person, colloquial yet witty style lets you into the recesses of her imagination and invites you to be her travel companion

—— Oxford Student

Lauren Elkin is one of our most valuable critical thinkers – the Susan Sontag of her generation

—— Deborah Levy

The acclaimed historian of Russia sweeps the brittle high society of pre-Revolutionary St Petersburg, the terror-chilled jails of Stalin's purges and the secrets of 1990s Moscow archives into a tragic panorama.'

—— INDEPENDENT, TEN OF THE HOTTEST BOOKS THIS SUMMER

A seamlessly written and moving portrait of the soviet Union in miniature from the Revolution to the age of Yeltsin.

—— MAIL ON SUNDAY

What is striking is how he has thrown himself heart and soul into the romance and emotion of his drama. The novel throbs with sex, maternal feeling, revolutionary fervour and terror ... Terrific stuff

—— SUNDAY TIMES
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