Review of "The Cat from Hue" by John Laurence

John Laurence, a young television reporter for CBS news, was sent to the front to cover the Vietnam War in 1965. Though barely surviving some situations, Laurence would go on to serve two additional “tours of duty”. It is this experience, along with personal reflection and commentary on the social and political arenas of Vietnam and the US that would later be collected in The Cat from Hue.  Interesting reading, those wishing to look deeper into life on the front lines in America’s war in Vietnam and media in the US should have a read.

A devil-may-care attitude is not precisely the mindset with which Laurence arrived in the southeast Asian country at war. It’s fair to say, however, his relative youth played a hand in repressing his fears and being somewhat innocent regarding American political interests in the region. The more time he spends at the front, however, interacting with soldiers and dealing with the contradictions and propaganda produced by not only the government but his own news agency, slowly drives Laurence to take his opinion of the war in the direction of much of America’s counter-culture, though naturally with a higher degree of sympathy for the soldiers and veterans and the clashing expectation from each side.

Review of "Red Star over China" by Edgar Snow

There is a famous communist image of a young Mao Zedong wearing a “flat cap” featuring a red star on its front.  As legend has it, the cap was a gift from the American journalist Edgar Snow, one of the few Westerners allowed behind communist lines in the ‘30s as China was caught in the grip of civil war and war with Japan.  Regardless of the veracity of the story, the cap would go on to feature prominently in communist propaganda, as would Snow’s resulting documentary, Red Star over China, in the West.

Though written at the time as a journalist piece, Snow’s appraisal of the communist movement in China in the ‘30s has since become a work of history.  The narrative predominantly relates the movement’s history, starting with the beginning of the 20th century to the date the book was published (1937).  From its early days in the southeast, the Long March, to its hiding out in caves of the north fighting against Nationalist and Japanese forces, Snow uses both Chinese and external sources in detailing the movement.  Each of these phases is given its political and dramatic due, though in the time since, better books have been published detailing the varying aspects.