Vietnam

Children's Literature - Greg M. Romaneck

The name of this Southeast Asian nation conjures up powerful emotions for many people old enough to remember the long and tragic war that was fought in Vietnam during the 1960s and early'70s, where tens of thousands of American soldiers were killed or maimed. Simultaneously, more than one million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died in a conflict that remains one of the most bitter elements in both American and Vietnamese history. Now, Vietnam has reemerged as a viable and growing nation. Still communist controlled, Vietnam has an expanding economy and increasing contact with Western nations with whom it once fought. In this illustrated volume of the "Modern World Nations" series writer Douglas A. Phillips does an outstanding job of detailing the land and people that make up this resurgent nation. Like other books in this solid series, Vietnam addresses a set of topics such as religion, natural resources, history, and governance. Written in a readable fashion, this book combines an excellent knowledge base with a smooth narrative flow. This is a well-crafted work and should be a valuable teaching/learning tool in a school or classroom library.