Many old New York City Photos and one of the same picture as it looks today. Great for people that enjoy comparing things that were to things that are today.

This book of photos should really be called Manhattan - Then And Now since all of the photos are of this Burough of New York. The book begins with photos of lower Manhattan and continues slowly uptown showing just about all of the important landmarks. This book was published after the 9/11 tragedy and some emphasis has been placed in showing the area in lower Manhattan before and after the terrorist attack.

This massive work manages to convey both the broader sense of history that many other books lack and an excellent history of the war itself.UNderstanding the country's history is crucial to understanding the folly of our involvement there and the author carefully portrays both the roots of the country's nationalism and its long history of tragedy and conflict.Karnow also goes to great pains to remain objective about the war and for this reason this is the best factual account of the war itself. He does not have an axe to grind as do many of the book's successors. All other books must compare themselves to this one, and all historians of the war must read Karnow's book. However, Karnow's objectivity makes this book read like a textbook, it is difficult to plow through at times, though the work is well worth it. For pure histroy, read it, but if you are also interested in a more passionate account of the war, read A Bright Shining Lie or The Best and the Brightest. Those books will have you in tears by the end, this book will merely increase your knowledge of this seminal event.

I was born the year the last American soldier left Vietnam, and I have grown up under the pall that the Vietnam War continues to cast over this nation. The regret and confusion in my parents generation continues in the nation's subconscious, blackening our memories and passing its scars on to the next generation.

I read this book after a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. in order to understand the passion and emotion that sit deep in our nation's heart. I was not disappointed.

Karnow not only provides a supurb history of Vietnam and its most recently fought war, but also speaks of the intensity of emotion that seared this war into the national consiousness. Karnow provides a textbook understanding of the war with the objectivity of a reporter who followed the events in Vietnam since its French occupation just after World War II.

The strength of Karnow's book is that he places the Vietnam War in context of the history of Vietnam. This historical knowledge is essential in understanding America's experience and the many miscalculations made during the conflict. Karnow's book will be read by many generations of people who want to understand this defining moment in American history.

As is related in the beginning of this book, Vietnam: A History is well read in Vietnam today--probablly due to the fact-based, unbiased, reporting style the author uses.

The book is split into two divisions. The first, containing a vast history of Vietnam, which can be laborious to get through, yet for history buffs, worth the effort. Second, the Vietnam War.

It is the second part of the book which will leave the readers awed by the ineptness and corruption of U.S. & South Vietnamese leadership--both military and political, especially at top levels--angry by the uninformedness of the American people, and shocked by the great cost in lives and property to two warring groups, whose involvement and happening was entirely preventable.

Probably no other person was, or is better qualified to write the Vietnam story than Stanley Karnow, who lived in Paris in the 1950's, as a U.S. foreign news correspondent during France's fight for dominance in Vietnam. He also interviewed numerous key participants. He dug into once classifed U.S. documents to reveal unknown information, and he researched and reported on the recollections of high-level polticians, dignataries, military leaders, and the soldiers, men, and women who fought on both sides.

An outstanding work!

I'd recommed reading "Paris in the Fifties" by the same author as a primer to this book.