Review - Canterbury Tales Cafe

[Daveo]

Lost Over Laos: A True Story Of Tragedy, Mystery, And Friendship by Richard Pyle & Horst Faas.

 

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In 1971, as American forces hastened their withdrawal from Vietnam, a helicopter was hit by enemy fire over Laos and exploded in a fireball, killing four top combat photographers: Larry Burrows of Life magazine, Henri Huet of Associated Press, Kent Potter of United Press International, and Keisaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek.

The remoteness of the crash site made a recovery attempt impossible.

When the war ended four years later, the war zone was sealed off and the helicopter incident faded from the headlines.

But two journalist colleagues the authors of this book returned to Laos twenty seven years later to resolve mysteries about the crash and pay homage to their lost friends.

[Daveo]

Survivor: The triumph of an ordinary man in the Khmer Rouge genocide; by Chum Mey,

 

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Survivor: The triumph of an ordinary man in the Khmer Rouge Genocide, published by DC-Cam in September of last year, but which slipped under my radar.

It is Chum Mey's story, a list of prisoners released from S-21, from where Chum Mey was fortunate enough to get out alive, another list of memoirs and films and a translation of his actual confession, which would've normally signaled your death warrant in Tuol Sleng, but in his case, he was kept alive because he mended a typewriter.

If he's not attending the ongoing Khmer Rouge Tribunal, you can usually find Chum Mey at S-21.

[Daveo]

Maverick: The Personal War Of A Vietnam Cobra Pilot

by Dennis J. Marvicsin & Jerold A. Greenfield.

 

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Reader review;

I have read many accounts by pilots and rate this one of the best.

The writers successfully combine a genuinely fascinating war story with a great deal of humanity and an entertaining writing style.

The book is easily readable and gets you right into 'Maverick's head from the start as he goes from wide eyed child with a dream, through to accomplishing that dream and becoming a helo pilot.

It then takes you seamlessly through from that immature wonder to the reality of what becoming an Army pilot in Vietnam really meant, warts and all.

As a reserved Brit, I never expected that the end of this book would be the first time I have had tears brought to my eyes while reading.

During his 2 tours Dennis Marvicsin flew slicks, Huey gunships and eventually Cobras, before being shot down and taken prisoner.

The book captures brilliantly the feeling of each chapter in his tale and, as importantly, Marvicsin own progression mentally /

/ personality wise as he became more affected by what he is doing and what is going on around him.

What is so good about this book is that it manages to do this engagingly, without losing pace or the reader's interest.

Whilst it does flow very well and I found it riveting, it does become a series of anecdotes in the latter chapters.

However, for me this does not detract from the book and it actually fits well with the overall story because it is used cleverly and effectively to illustrate the time when Marvicsin is himself living day-to-day, mentally closed down, and can only open up when ever more extreme events force their way into his consciousness.

Since Robert Mason's 'Chickenhawk' (which I would also recommend) seems to be the yardstick for such books I will attempt to provide a little comparison...

Overall I prefered 'Maverick' for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I found I identified with Marvicsin much better than with Mason (but of course this could just be me personally). Marvicsin is of the warrior caste and has a far more aggressive personality, with real outward passion for whatever he is doing, more like a fast jet pilot than a helicopter transport pilot. Secondly, the writing style is more suited to the frenetic activity of this story.

With Chickenhawk I was fascinated by the story and the missions, with Maverick I felt the abject panic, the frustration, the pain and the mental confusion.

Lastly, this book gets you inside the head of a PoW, as it is happening,frightening.

Final comment; this book is different to Chickenhawk and they are both worth reading.

They tell different stories, of different periods of the war, and are about very different people with largely different experiences. Read them both.

[Daveo]

Saigon: The Final Days by Ralph S. Watts.

 

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Who Lives, Who Dies. Fifteen years ago, a Vietnamese conference president and his staff wrestled all night with that decision.

Saigon: The Final Days tells the story of the fall of Saigon through the eyes of Ralph Watts, who directed the dramatic evacuation of Seventh-day Adventists as Vietnamese forces closed in on Saigon.

[Daveo]

Tiger Balm by Lucretia Stewart.

 

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Tiger Balm is broken into 12 chapters describing different portions of the author’s trips through Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

It’s a journey that’s been done millions of times before… so what makes this one special?

Stewart was traveling in a politically delicate time when these countries were only just beginning to heal from decades of war, turmoil, and tragedy.

In some cases, like in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, she was the first Western woman to visit since the war.

 

One of the overarching themes of the book is Stewart’s struggles to cut through the red tape of the time and obtain the necessary permits, visas, and handlers (she was rarely ever allowed by the governments to travel without local guides).

I remember complaining about the process of obtaining a Thai visa while in Vietnam, a process that took a whole day.

Stewart waited months for a visa to Laos, only to arrive and not be allowed to leave the capital of Vientiane.

But of course as in any travel related memoir the destinations are the real stars.

Tiger Balm weaves a delicate story of three countries that despite their unique personalities and individual qualities are bound together forever by geography, culture, and history.

As Stewart recounts in a proverb recited to her by an elderly Cambodian: “The Cambodians plant the rice

The Vietnamese harvest the rice

The Laos watch the rice grow”

[Daveo]

Time for Celebration by Jun Feng.

 

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Time for Celebration is an novel about Jun Feng"s escape from China to Denmark, about the difficult and inhuman experiences he has had in a country where human life isn't regarded as anything other than a little screw that holds socialism"s big machinery together, and how the memories of his escape and imprisonment contribute to the formation of his new life.

 

Jun Feng was born in 1965, in Shanghai China.

He received his bachelor"s degree in mathematics in 1986.

He has written over 700 poems and under the pseudonym Jim but, became a well-known underground poet during the 1980"s in China.

His love poem The First Question attained cult status among the university students in China.

Consequently, Jun Feng came to the attention of the police and in 1988 he was accepted into a Buddhist monastery in order to hide from the authorities.

He fled to Thailand in 1989 and was imprisoned in Laos in 1990. With the assistance of the United Nations, he was released from prison in 1992 and came to Denmark, where he holds a bachelor"s degree in philosophy from Odense University, Denmark.

[Daveo]

Greater Nowheres: Wanderings Across the Outback

by Dave Finkelstein & Jack London.

 

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A wildly funny journey through the outback, a forbidding adventure for even the most daring Aussie explorers.

[Daveo]

Travels in the White Man's Grave by Donald MacIntosh.

 

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At the beginning of the 1950's, the interior of West and Central Africa was still known to most of the outside world as the 'White Man's Grave' and consisted of vast expanses of mysterious and threatening primeval forest.

When Donald MacIntosh, 23 year old Gaelic speaking Scottish forester, was offered a position in Nigeria in 1954, it was a dream come true and he found himself posted to the hot, cloying humidity of those fabled lands.

During the next 30 years he was to wander through some of the most remote areas of West Africa where he operated as a forest botanist.

There he listened to the tales of ancient Africa from the lips of hunters, fishermen, chiefs and witchdoctors from a vast diversity of tribes in myriad encampments.

He drank palm wine with them and attended their village dances and ceremonies under the tropic moon.

He had many adventures with the creatures of the forest, from the magnificent leopard to the instantly fatal spitting cobra.

The sinister arcanum of primitive Africa is never too far away from the surface in this book, encountering a host of characters along the way, with exotic names like 'Magic T. Sperm' and 'Famous Sixpence' whose stories are all told here.

[Daveo]

Turn Right at Istanbul: A Walk on the Gallipoli Peninsula

by Tony Wright.

 

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A personal account of the author's visit to Turkey, offering practical advice for the thousands of Australians who dream of making the nostalgic journey to Turkey and Gallipoli, coupled with a short history of the area and its role in WWI.

 

[Daveo]

Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost.

 

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Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh out loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific.

When the travel bug hit again, he decided to go big time, taking on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation.

In Lost on Planet China, Troost escorts readers on a rollicking journey through the new beating heart of the modern world, from the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai to the Gobi Desert and the hinterlands of Tibet.

 

Lost on Planet China finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China’s most revered mountain.

But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think.

As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world, indeed, a planet, unto itself.

 

Maarten Troost brings China to life as you’ve never seen it before, and his insightful, rip roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining and insightful armchair travel companions around.

[Daveo]

Ashoka: the Search for India's Lost Emperor

by Charles Allen.

 

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India's lost emperor Ashoka Maurya has a special place in history.

In his quest to govern India by moral force alone Ashoka turned Buddhism from a minor sect into a world religion and set up a new yardstick for government which had huge implications for Asia.

But his brave experiment ended in tragedy and his name was cleansed from the record so effectively that he was forgotten for almost two thousand years.

But a few mysterious stone monuments and inscriptions survived, and the story of how these keystones to the past were discovered by British Orientalists and their mysterious lettering deciphered is every bit as remarkable as their author himself.

Bit by bit, fragments of the Ashokan story were found and in the process India's ancient history was itself recovered.

In a wide ranging, multi layered journey of discovery that is as much about Britain's entanglement with India as it as about India's distant past, Charles Allen tells the story of the man who was arguably the greatest ruler India has ever known.

[Daveo]

The Hand of Fatima. by Ildefonso Falcones.

 

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Snared between two cultures and two loves, one man is forced to choose...1564, the Kingdom of Granada.

After years of Christian oppression, the Moors take arms against their masters and daub the white houses of Sierra Nevada with the blood of their victims.

Caught in the conflict is young Hernando, the son of an Arab woman who was raped by a Christian priest.

Despised by the townsfolk and by his own stepfather for his 'tainted' heritage, he is banished to live in the stables and becomes an expert muleteer.

When Hernando meets Fatima, a beautiful girl with black eyes, she becomes the love of his life.

But his stepfather accuses Hernando of Christian sympathies and condemns him to slavery.

Then news reaches Hernando that Fatima has been murdered. In despair, he embarks on a plan to unite the two warring faiths

and the two halves of his identity.

A breath taking epic of good and evil, of love and hate, of dreams dashed and hopes regained, Ildefonso Falcones' story of the Arab-Christian conflict brims with historical detail and unforgettable characters and reflects the author's celebrated passion for rich historical detail and his flair for storytelling.

[Daveo]

Nation Before Self by Yuen Yuet Leng.

 

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Yuen Yuet Leng is an intrepid survivor of Malaysia's life and death struggle against the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) during the turbulent 1st Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) and subsequent emergency years till 1989.

Initially a resolute, compassionate and courageous paramilitary platoon commander in a police Jungle company, he was a soldier's soldier and was greatly admired by his men.

He led from the front and was twice wounded in action.

He thereafter distinguish himself similarly in 20 long years in the Special Branch in secret and delicate operations.

He was both strategist and tactician, grudgingly respected and feared, he was targeted for assassination during numerous failed communist operations.

An apolitical yet politically conscious senior police commander, he had from youth believed, fought and almost died for a multiracial Malaysia with justice and equity to all communities without any prejudice to Bumiputras.

[Daveo]

Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors

by Dith Pran.

 

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This extraordinary book contains eyewitness accounts of life in Cambodia during Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, accounts written by survivors who were children at the time.

The book has been put together by Dith Pran, whose own experiences in Cambodia were so graphically portrayed in the film The Killing Fields.

 

The testimonies related here bear poignant witness to the slaughter the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the Cambodian people. The contributors, most of them now in the United States and pictured in photographs that accompany their stories, report on life in Democratic Kampuchea as seen through children's eyes. They speak of their bewilderment and pain as Khmer Rouge cadres tore their families apart, subjected them to harsh brainwashing, drove them from their homes to work in forced labor camps, and executed captives in front of them.

Their stories tell of suffering and the loss of innocence, the struggle to survive against all odds, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

[Daveo]

The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War; by Denise Chong.

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On 8 June 1972, nine year old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from her burning village and into the eye of history. Her photograph, seen around the world, helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War and is one of a handful of images that remain branded in the public consciousness.
This book is the story of how that photograph came to be, but also of what happened to Kim Phuc after it was taken. 
It opens up to readers an unknown world, the world of Vietnam after the US army left. 
Kim became a pawn in the Communist regime's propaganda campaign, even as her own family fought a losing battle to support itself in a physically and economically devastated country, now plagued with corruption. 
Kim's recovery and rehabilitation from her terrible wounds was long and arduous and, after years of manipulation by Vietnamese officials, she made a dramatic escape to Canada, where she now lives. Denise Chong has written a detailed, humanistic account of everyday life in the wake of the Vietnam War, as well as a meditation on the aftermath of celebrity, and the power of an image.

[Daveo]

Conflict: Journeys through war and terror in Southeast Asia

by Nelson Rand.

 

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Nelson Rand is an intrepid adventurer.

Despite the warnings and threats against his life, he journeyed into the most dangerous parts of Southeast Asia to witness the plight of the oppressed.

He hiked through the jungles of Laos to interview Hmong guerillas, the remnants of the rebel army that refused to surrender to the communist government.

In Vietnam, he ventured into the central highlands to document the civil rights abuses suffered by the Montagnard people, persecuted by the communist government because they fought alongside American forces in the Vietnam War.

He saw action in Burma where he joined forces with the Karen National Liberation Army and accompanied the insurgents as they mounted full scale attacks on Junta forces.

Rand describes the Karen's plight as one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our time.

He documented cases of rape, killings, torture and the forced relocation of Karen villages.

His audacious journey also took him to southern Thailand in search of Islamic extremists, who have turned the region into a war zone.

While travelling in Cambodia, he accompanied government soldiers on their final offensive against the Khmer Rouge. Rand's book is a highly informative but sobering portrait of Southeast Asia and its secret conflicts.

[Daveo]

Cheating Death: Combat Air Rescues in Vietnam and Laos

by George J. Marrett.

 

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They flew low and slow, at treetop level, at night, in monsoons, and in point-blank range of enemy guns and missiles.

They were missions no one else wanted, but the ones all other pilots prayed for when shot down.

Flying the World War II-vintage Douglas A-1 Skyraider, a single-engine, propeller-driven relic in a war of “fast-movers,” these intrepid US Air Force pilots, call sign Sandy, risked their lives with every mission to rescue thousands of downed Navy and Air Force pilots.

 

With a flashback memory and a style all his own, George J. Marrett depicts some of the most dangerous aerial combat of any war.

The thrilling rescue of “Streetcar 304” and William Jones's selfless act of heroism that earned him the Medal of Honor are but two of the compelling tales he recounts.

Here too are the courageous Jolly Green Giant helicopter crews, parajumpers, and forward air controllers who worked with the Sandys over heavily defended jungles and mountains well behind enemy lines.

 

Passionate, mordantly witty, and filled with heart pounding adrenaline, Cheating Death reads like the finest combat fiction, but it is the real deal: its heroes, cowards, jokers, and casualties all have names and faces readers will find difficult to forget.

[Daveo]

The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945; by David P. Chandler.

 

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The political history of Cambodia between 1945 and 1979, which culminated in the devastating revolutionary excesses of the Pol Pot regime, is one of unrest and misery.

This book by David P. Chandler is the first to give a full account of this tumultuous period.

 

Drawing on his experience as a foreign service officer in Phnom Penh, on interviews, and on archival material.

Chandler considers why the revolution happened and how it was related to Cambodia’s earlier history and to other events in Southeast Asia.

He describes Cambodia’s brief spell of independence from Japan after the end of World War II; the long and complicated rule of Norodom Sihanouk, during which the Vietnam War gradually spilled over Cambodia’s borders; the bloodless coup of 1970 that deposed Sihanouk and put in power the feeble, pro-American government of Lon Nol; and the revolution in 1975 that ushered in the radical changes and horrors of Pol Pot’s Communist regime.

Chandler discusses how Pol Pot and his colleagues evacuated Cambodia’s cities and towns, transformed its seven million people into an unpaid labor force, tortured and killed party members when agricultural quotas were unmet, and were finally overthrown in the course of a Vietnamese military invasion in 1979.

His book is a penetrating and poignant analysis of this fierce revolutionary period and the events of the previous quarter century that made it possible.

[Daveo]

The Lao; Gender, Power, and Livelihood

By: Carol Ireson-Doolittle, Geraldine Moreno-Black.

 

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"The Lao" discusses culture and village life in Laos, exploring topics of kinship and family, gender relations, households, religion, livelihood strategies, and ethnicity.

In particular, the effects of recent development projects on the relative power of men and women in rural Lao society, and the responses of women to those changes, are highlighted.

Ireson-Doolittle and Moreno-Black not only provide a description of life on the ground but also explore how local affairs are connected to the wider world, and how the Lao people preserve traditions while also responding to change.

[Daveo]

Survival in the Killing Fields; by Haing Ngor & Roger Warner.

 

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Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime.

I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust.

That's who I am.

 

He became famous through his academy award winning performance as Dith Pran in the film The Killing Fields, but the key to Haing Ngor's screen success was the terrible truth of his own experiences in the rice paddies and labour camps of revolutionary Cambodia.

 

Here, in a gripping memoir of life under the communist Khmer Rouge regime, he reveals the country's descent into a hell beyond our imaginings: a world of war slaves and senseless brutality, where family life simply ceases to be.

But with the pain he also gives us hope and an illuminating example of how the best sort of love can actually be strengthened through the shared experience of a life threatening ordeal.

An eyewitness account of the real killing fields by an extraordinary survivor, this book is both a reminder of the horrors of war and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

[Daveo]

Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison

by David P. Chandler.

 

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The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970's is one of the century's major human disasters. 'David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name "S-21."

The facility was an interrogation center where more than 14,000 "enemies" were questioned, tortured, and made to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes.

Fewer than a dozen prisoners left S-21alive.

 

During the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era, the existence of S-21 was known only to those inside it and a few high ranking Khmer Rouge officials.

When invading Vietnamese troops discovered the prison in 1979, murdered bodies lay strewn about and instruments of torture were still in place.

An extensive archive containing photographs of victims, cadre notebooks, and DK publications was also found.

Chandler utilizes evidence from the S-21 archive as well as materials that have surfaced elsewhere in Phnom Penh.

He also interviews survivors of S-21 and former workers from the prison.

 

Documenting the violence and terror that took place within S-21 is only part of Chandler's story.

Equally important is his attempt to understand what happened there in terms that might be useful to survivors, historians, and the rest of us.

Chandler discusses the "culture of obedience" and its attendant dehumanization, citing parallels between the Khmer Rouge executions and the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930's, Nazi genocide, Indonesian massacres in 1965-66, the Argentine military's use of torture in the 1970s, and the recent mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. In each of these instances, Chandler shows how turning victims into "others" in a manner that was systematically devaluing and racialist made it easier to mistreat and kill them.

More than a chronicle of Khmer Rouge barbarism, Voices from S-21 is also a judicious examination of the psychological dimensions of state sponsored terrorism that conditions human beings to commit acts of unspeakable brutality.

[Daveo]

Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot

by David P. Chandler.

 

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In the tragic recent history of Cambodia a past scarred by a long occupation by Vietnamese forces and by the preceding three year reign of terror by the brutal Khmer Rouge,no figure looms larger or more ominously than that of Pol Pot.

As secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) since 1962 and as prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), he has been widely blamed for trying to destroy Cambodian society.

By implementing policies whose effects were genocidal, he oversaw the deaths of more than one million of his nation’s people.

The political career of Saloth Sar, better known by his nom de guerre Pol Pot, forms a critical but largely inaccessible portion of twentieth-century Cambodian history.

What we know about his life is sketchy: a comfortable childhood, three years of study in France, and a short career as a schoolteacher preceded several years, spent mostly in hiding, as a guerrilla and the commander of the victorious army in Cambodia’s civil war.

His career reached a climax when he and his associates, coming to power, attempted to transform their country along lines more radical than any attempted by a modern regime. Driven into hiding in 1979 by invading Vietnamese forces, Pol Pot maintained his leadership of a Khmer Rouge guerrilla army in exile, remaining a power and a threat.

In this political biography, David P. Chandler throws light on the shadowy figure of Pol Pot.

Basing his study on interviews and on a wide range of sources in English, Cambodian and French, the author illuminates the ideas and behavior of this enigmatic man and his entourage against the background of post World War II events, providing a key to understanding this horrific, pivotal period of Cambodian history.

In this revised edition, Chandler provides new information on the state of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge following the death of Pol Pot in 1997.

[Daveo]

Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, by Philip Short.

 

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Observing Pol Pot at close quarters during the one and only official visit he ever made abroad, to China in 1975, Philip Short was struck by the Cambodian leader's charm and charisma.

Yet Pol Pot's utopian experiments in social engineering would result in the death of one in every five Cambodians, more than a million people.

How did an idealistic dream of justice and prosperity mutate into one of humanity's worst nightmares?

To answer these questions, Short traveled through Cambodia, interviewing former Khmer Rouge leaders and sifting through previously closed archives around the world.

Key figures, including Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary, Pol brother in law and foreign minister, speak here for the first time.

[Daveo]

Message from Hell by A.J. Quinnell.

 

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The latest Creasy adventure takes our hero to Vietnam and Cambodia, ostensibly on a mission to rescue a US serviceman taken prisoner twenty-six years earlier during the Vietnam war. In reality, however, the mission is a decoy organised by a sadistic Eurasian woman, Connie Crum, who is a high-ranking officer of the Khmer Rouge.

She has long harboured a grudge against Creasy who was responsible for the death of her father.

A cat and mouse game between the two principles ensues, as each tries to outguess the other, resulting in a climactic shoot out in a heavily mined and guarded Buddhist temple hidden in the Cambodian Jungle.

[Daveo]

White Hunters:The Golden Age of African Safaris

by Brian Herne.

 

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East Africa affects our imagination like few other places: The sight of a charging rhino goes directly to the heart; the limitless landscape of bony highlands, desert, and mountain is, as Isak Dinesen wrote, of "unequalled nobility."

White Hunters is the story of seventy years of African adventure, danger, and romance.

It re creates the legendary big game safaris led by Selous and Bell and the daring ventures of early hunters into unexplored territories, and brings to life such romantic figures as Cape to Cairo Grogan, who walked 4,000 miles for the love of a woman, and Dinesen's dashing lover, Denys Finch.

Witnesses to the richest wildlife spectacle on the earth, these hunters were the first conservationists.

Hard drinking, infatuated with risk, and careless in love, they inspired Hemingway's stories and movies with Clark Gable and Gregory Peck.