All too often, the Vietnamese are portrayed as either heartless fanatics or hapless victims. They were neither. This book, by a veteran of the North Vietnamese Army, does not glorify their struggle, but shows how, through immense hardship, they achieved not some propaganda glorious victory, but ensured their country remained theirs, and their humanity somehow remained intact. The beautiful, surreal backdrop of the jungle and the horrors of war stand in contrast, as do the everyday details of cooking or finding a place to sleep and the epic scale of the war. There are good, terrible and great accounts of the war from the American side, but if you want to see how it was for the Vietnamese, and indeed see what war is like stripped of glory, but not of humanity, then read this excellent book.