First published in 1961 by Stackpole Books, Street without Joy is a classic of military history. Journalist and scholar Bernard Fall vividly captured the sights, sounds, and smells of the brutal— and politically complicated—conflict between the French and the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina. The French fought to the bitter end, but even with the lethal advantages of a modern military, they could not stave off the Viet Minh insurgency of hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. The final French defeat came at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and a far bloodier chapter in Vietnam‘s history. Fall combined graphic reporting with deep scholarly knowledge of Vietnam and its colonial history in a book memorable in its descriptions of jungle fighting and insightful in its arguments. After more than a half a century in print, Street without Joy remains required reading.

Bernard B Fall was 40 years old when he was killed by a booby trap in northern South Vietnam on February 21, 1967. By the time of his death he had already authored seven books on Vietnam. This book, first published shortly after Dr Fall's death, is a tribute to his life's work. It contains the only known autobiographical account of his life, several previously unpublished articles, notes for 'Street Without Joy Revisited', and transcripts of Dr Fall's tape recordings, including his last recorded words.

A visual history of the Vietnam War in the Stackpole Military Photo Series. Included are detailed photos of soldiers, helicopters and ground vehicles, villages and terrain, base camps, and more. With hundreds of photos, many of them rare and never published before, this is the perfect complement to the narrative accounts in the Stackpole Military History Series, such as Street Without Joy and Land With No Sun.

Bernard Fall wrote the classics Street Without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place, which detailed the French experience in Vietnam. One of the first (and the best-informed) Western observers to say that the United States could not win there either, he was killed in Vietnam in 1967 while accompanying a Marine platoon. Written by his widow Dorothy, Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar tells the story of this courageous and influential Frenchman, who experienced many of the major events of the twentieth century. His mother perished at Auschwitz, his father was killed by the Gestapo, and he himself fought in the Resistance. It focuses, however, on Vietnam and on two love stories. The first details Fall's love for Vietnam and his efforts to save the country from destruction and the United States from disaster. The second shows a husband and father dedicated to a cause that continuously lured him away from those he loved. With a foreword by the late David Halberstam.

From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy In the acclaimed Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our species' attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion." Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites' fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent "carnivalization" of sports. Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, Dancing in the Streets concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future. "Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead."—Terry Eagleton, The Nation

The 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu ranks with Stalingrad and Tet for what it ended (imperial ambitions), what it foretold (American involvement), and what it symbolized: A guerrilla force of Viet Minh destroyed a technologically superior French army, convincing the Viet Minh that similar tactics might prevail in battle with the U.S.

Jungle Mission is a poignant account of René Riesen’s life and mission during the First Indochina War amongst the Montagnards, and his ever growing love for these people by going native, learning their language, their traditions, their rituals, and their way of life. During World War II, Riesen worked briefly for the Vichy government and, following liberation, received a 20-year prison sentence. He volunteered to serve in the “BILOM” (Bataillon Leger d’Infanterie d’Outre-Mer), where WWII political prisoners could redeem themselves. Arriving in Saigon in May 1950 as a Colonial Infantry “2eme Classe” soldier affected to the BILOM—which by then had ceased to exist and most of its soldiers assigned to the BMEO (“Bataillon de Marche Extreme Orient”) created in January 1950—Riesen was assigned to the 1st Company, 4th BMEO at the outpost of Kon Plong, controlling access to the coastal plains of Son Ha and Ba To; this post was located about a day’s travel away from Kontum, positioned on a 1,800m high peak, where the rainy season lasted about seven months, with thick fog present almost every day. In December 1950, the 4th BMEO was renamed to the 4th Montagnard battalion, and its HQ remained at Ban Mé Thuot whilst its Battalions operated around Kontum. Riesen would go on to serve four years in the Kontum area and joined the GCMA after its formation, serving under Captain Hentic (“L’action Hre”). For his services in French Indochina, Corporal Riesen was awarded the French Croix de Guerre, the Croix des T.O.E (Théâtres d’opérations extérieures) and the Croix de la Vaillance Vietnamienne, with palm for his actions in French Indochina. As with many others, following his tour in Indochina Riesen was sent to the much quieter operational theatre of Algeria; however, this area too did not remain peaceful for long, escalating quickly into full warfare, and Riesen and his wife died during an ambush by Arabs in December 1956.

In a 1965 letter to Newsweek, French writer and academic Bernard Fall (1926-67) staked a claim as the 'Number One Realist' on the Vietnam War. This is the first book to study the thought of this overlooked figure, one of the most important experts on counterinsurgency warfare in Indochina. Nathaniel L. Moir's intellectual history analyses Fall's formative experiences: his service in the French underground and army during the Second World War; his father's execution by the Germans and his mother's murder in Auschwitz; and his work as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Trials. Moir demonstrates how these critical events shaped Fall's trenchant analysis of Viet Minh-led revolutionary warfare during the French-Indochina War and the early Vietnam War. In the years before conventional American intervention in 1965, Fall argued that--far more than anything in the United States' military arsenal--resolving conflict in Vietnam would require political strength, willpower, integrity and skill. Number One Realist illuminates Fall's study of political reconciliation in Indochina, while showing how his profound, humanitarian critique of war continues to echo in the endless conflicts of the present. It will challenge and change the way we think about the Vietnam War.

A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh’s climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America’s experience in Vietnam On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army. Taking readers from the outbreak of fighting in 1945 to the epic battle at Dien Bien Phu, Christopher Goscha shows how Ho transformed Vietnam from a decentralized guerrilla state based in the countryside to a single-party communist state shaped by a specific form of “War Communism.” Goscha discusses how the Vietnamese operated both states through economics, trade, policing, information gathering, and communications technology. He challenges the wisdom of counterinsurgency methods developed by the French and still used by the Americans today, and explains why the First Indochina War was arguably the most brutal war of decolonization in the twentieth century, killing a million Vietnamese, most of them civilians. Panoramic in scope, The Road to Dien Bien Phu transforms our understanding of this conflict and the one the United States would later enter, and sheds new light on communist warfare and statecraft in East Asia today.

“The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational.” —Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians Amy Tan’s beloved, New York Times bestselling tale of mothers and daughters, now the focus of a new documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir on Netflix Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.