Tiger in the Barbed Wire: An American in Vietnam 1952-1991 (Kodansha Globe) - Softcover

Simpson, Howard R.

4.43

14 ratings by Goodreads

9781568360256: Tiger in the Barbed Wire: An American in Vietnam 1952-1991 (Kodansha Globe)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1568360258 ISBN 13: 9781568360256

Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc, 1994

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Tiger in the Barbed Wire is a fast-paced, colorful memoir by one of the few Americans to live in Vietnam during both the French and American wars. In the 1950s, Foreign Service officer Howard R. Simpson patrolled with French paratroopers at Dien Bien Phu, reported on Hanoi's fall to the Vietminh, was a press advisor to ill-fated Premier Ngo Dinh Diem, and was nearly machine-gunned in street fighting during the bloody Revolt of the Sects. In the 1960s, at a time when coups were the order of the day, he was a press advisor to Prime Minister Nguyen Khanh. When he returned to Vietnam recently to observe the shooting of a movie about Dien Bien Phu--a film that will include some of his own experiences--he interviewed the legendary Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of the North's victory. Over the years, the author came to know many of the French, Vietnamese, and Americans who shaped Vietnam's tragic destiny. This extraordinary life is described in vivid, powerful imagery by a writer whose skills have been honed during a successful second career as a novelist. As Simpson progresses from neophyte to "old Indochina hand, " the reader learns what Vietnam was like during two explosive decades--and what it is like today.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Memoir of Vietnam by the author of A Very Large Consulate (1988) and other novels, including one about the French war against the Vietnamese (To a Silent Valley, 1961). Well over half of Simpson's book concerns his tenure as press officer for the US Foreign Service in Saigon, 1952-55. Simpson got along well with the French, and the set-pieces here are his accounts of the battle of Dien Bien Phu and the vital engagement at Nasan that prefigured that great turning point. Particularly affecting are the desperate hopes of the French commanders and their Algerian/Moroccan/Legionnaire troops as the battle goes badly and they beg, in vain, for American air support. There are shades of Graham Greene's The Quiet American in Simpson's depictions of the dying French empire and the brash but naive American opportunism; and the portraits of the eternally patient General Giap and of the corrupt Diem regime are painstakingly informed, not only from Simpson's personal observations but also from declassified accounts. The chronicle ends with Simpson's 1991 return, as a correspondent, to Hanoi and Saigon, where he visits the set of the French-made film Dien Bien Phu, in which he is a character. He meets with General Giap, who muses on the inevitability of his peasant army's victory. But mostly what Giap and others want, Simpson explains, is for the American trade embargo to be lifted and for Vietnam's economy to achieve its considerable potential. The embargo, says Simpson, has lost every rationale and is now simply ``vindictive.'' Particularly engaging as a chronicle of French defeat and, despite all best advice, the taking up of the doomed struggle by the US. -- Copyright �1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Former foreign service officer Simpson's memoir of his life in Vietnam from 1952 to 1991.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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