historical

John Laurence was a CBS-TV journalist during the Vietnam War. Now, thirty years later, he has pulled together all his recollections, notes and collected data in this in-depth tome, fully 841 pages long. Its physical weight alone meant that it was too heavy for me to carry around, and so I kept it at my bedside, reading only a few pages at a time each night and taking more than six months to finally finish it. This gave me a chance to fully digest the impact of the thousands of details that make up his story, bringing me right into the heart of the action, and sharing his experience of the conflict as he was living it.

In 1968, during the Tet Offensive in the city of Hue, amidst the bombing and destruction, he found an abandoned kitten with a feisty personality. To him, this symbolized the strong will of the North Vietnamese enemies. He adopted the kitten who then shows up sporadically during the long narrative, always getting into trouble, attacking other cats and generally being a nuisance. The author came to love this cat however, and the reader can sense the author's humanity in the way he cared for his pet.

The book is filled with hundreds of direct quotes from the men in the field, descriptions of day-to-day life in a war zone, the challenges of filming the war "up close" and getting the film to CBS on time for broadcast, the camaraderie and competition among the journalists, the physical discomfort of life in the field, compassion for the horrors experienced by both the soldiers and the Vietnamese people and the sharpened senses of knowing your life is always in danger. There were several incidents of conflict between the journalists and military brass and an incident captured on film when some soldiers made their own choices rather than accept an unwise command. There were also descriptions of drug and alcohol use, both among the men and the journalists, and some wild plane rides. Underlying all this, the question of "why" was always there.

I felt I was right there with Mr. Laurence, throughout the book - observing the carnage and meeting the people, enjoying brief respites from the violence, and, most of all, bringing the story to the people back home as a witness to his times. I learned facts in this book. And felt emotion. But, most of all, it made me think, and that is where the strength of this writing lies. I give this book an extremely high recommendation. It's a slow read. But definitely worthwhile.

At long last, more than 25 years after the shooting stopped, legendary television war-correspondent John Laurence has written what might be called the last, final "bookend" volume to a stunning but uneven cascade of post-WWII, post-Korea war reports, starting with David Halberstam's "The Making of a Quagmire." Laurence's massive undertaking -- 848 pages --goes from the innocence and wildness of the 60s generation through the eventual horror of a nation and its leaders, to a re-thinking of imperialism and democracy in the 21st Century. "The Cat From Hue" -- and there really IS a cat from Hue -- conveys America's learning process and its consequences, examined by one of the architects of "the living-room war." Whether you've read all of "the Vietnam books," or none of them, "The Cat From Hue" delivers what the publisher calls "enlightened non-fiction," complete with foolish and fatal anecdotes, revelations of reporters perfecting their craft, and finding the truth, in the field and in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of "the military media." Laurence's carefully-kept notes and recordings provide a factual underpinning for a style that rivals Hammett, Forsythe and even Graham Greene in the depth, swagger and surprise of its findings.

Mr. Laurence certainly has a lot to say, as evinced by this hefty tome's volume. Unfortunately for the hapless reader this lot is not well put. Thas is to say that Mr. Laurence, while perhaps an exemplary television newsman and radio reporter, is not a particularly gifted writer. Part of the problem may be the difficulty of reconstructing daily events in minute detail thirty years after the fact. Having said that, it would seem that a great raconteur would have used the intervening thirty years between event and authorship to hone the tales he wishes to tell into finely crafted, razor-edge vignettes that would bring the experience and the characters alive for the author. Sad to say, Mr. Laurence failed to do this. So, I suspect that you, like I, will eagerly delve into this book, then plod through, then get bogged down in a swamp of wispy, vapid detail until finally tossing the book aside with a sigh heavy with unmet expectations and dashed high hopes. At the end of it all, one must say to oneself, "So, there is some stuff from the Vietnam war that simply is not worth recounting, and I have found it." One of the promotional blurbs touting this book makes the comparison between this and Herr's book. I believe that this is a pretty good comparison as neither is particulary well done; although, as between the two, I'd choose Dispatches. I would recommend to you instead a two volume set (or the one volume compilation republishing) titled 'Reporting Vietnam' which is absolutely, jaw droppingly fine Vietnam War reportage which must not be missed. Good Luck.