A Tale of Three Wars is simply a splendid book. Written by one of the military's leading thinkers, retired General Atkeson's book analyzes the complexities of the Vietnam War through the venue of historical fiction. He illustrates the fractured nature of the NLF (National Liberation Front) and Viet Cong, the often problematic relationship between the US and South Vietnamese intelligence and military authorities, and the troubled internal politics of South Vietnam itself. The result is a nuanced and sophisticated picture of the Vietnam War and the challenges faced by the US in dealing with the daunting problems of insurgency, corruption, and political infighting.

This book is particularly critical now during the War on Terrorism. Atkeson has shattered the notion that the NLF, VC, and North Vietnam represented a homogeneous, monolithic enemy. He has shown that beneath the thin skin of solidarity nationalist and ideological movements (and those purporting to be religious) are more often than not fractured alliances of necessity that hide competing ideas, agendas, and struggles for power. The most effective way to deal with them is to find the seams and the fractures and exploit them, as Atkeson's protagonist, Paul McCandless, did in the novel. A similar approach to the War on Terrorism is likely to be very successful. -- Christopher D. Kolenda, Editor and Co-Author of Leadership: The Warrior's Art.

For this civilian, MG Atkeson finally explains some of the roots and conflicts of the Vietnam war and how the participants in it -- on all sides, including the home front -- contributed to its resolution in frustration, disappointment, and loss of honor.

Although Vietnam, from Tet to Ia Drang to the last helicopter out, contains enough action for a library of novels, MG Atkeson explains the long battle of attrition by what is, essentially, a novel of character, in particular, the characters of a relatively fast-track young Intelligence officer, an American-trained South Vietnamese officer; and a cadre leader among the Viet Cong, trained like many rebels from Ho Chi Minh on in France.

All of them have been snatched from their "normal" lives, but those lives have written deeply on them and influence how they live -- and fight their war. Ultimately, they are brought together in a resolution as moving as it is, essentially, indeterminate.

A gulf has opened between those men and what they thought they were fighting for -- a gulf similar to that found today even inside the US.

I am grateful for this clarification of something I didn't understand when I was living through it.

Let there be no doubt about it--A Tale of Three Wars is one of the best novels ever written about the Viet Nam War. It certainly is the most authoritative, and the plot is a well-crafted, elaborate, Byzantine labyrinth. If you fought in the war or are interested in a unique view of the internal and external conflicts that characterized it, your simply must read MG "Ted" Atkeson's latest effort.

The novel follows the exploits of three main characters: "Paul" McCandless, Infantry officer turned Military Intelligence; MAJ Nguyen Van Do, Paul's counterpart, CGSC classmate and friend; and Patriot (Comrade) Van Ba, a Sorbonne-trained physician who commands the local Phu Loi Battalion. Thus, the three wars of the title, as each fights his enemies and organizational restrictions that tend to frustrate every endeavor. This is not, however, a "blood and guts" combat tale. There are a few battle scenes, some interesting cloak and dagger work, and a major operation launched during the novel, but the most significant conflicts are mental.

Van Ba is competent, efficient, and effective as a guerrilla commander--he manages to capture an entire platoon of tanks from a government compound--but is constantly being brought to task for ideological deviations by his political officer, Tran Hua, and his higher headquarters, the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN).

MAJ Do is fond of American jazz, slang expressions and Parliament cigarettes and indispensable to his commanding general when American newsmen and Congressmen must be briefed. He is delighted when Paul is assigned as his counterpart, but circumstances interfere with their friendship, and he must remain loyal to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, even when he suspects that a respected superior officer may be controlled by the Viet Cong.

MAJ (later LTC) McCandless is equally delighted to see MAJ Do, but he soon must plant a "cover story" with his friend as part of the security measures for a major operation in the planning stages. Paul has his own difficulties with the "hell bent for leather" commanding general of the fictional 100th Division ("Big Hundred"), his boss, the Field Force G-2, and a wife with liberal political tendencies.

In addition to a number of logical but frustrating twists and turns in the plot line, there is a false climax when a group of officers who gather informally to gripe about the war effort are tasked by the Field Force commander to produce a valid plan for changing the way the war is fought. They come up with a workable plan based upon interdicting the Ho Chi Minh trail with troops, but politics on the home front as well as the politics of the Pentagon interfere. The resulting non-answer from higher evokes this frustrated comment from one of the officers, "Nobody with four stars has the guts to go to the mat for what he believes."

But no one--certainly not the reader--has time to wallow in self-pity. Atkeson turns up the heat on the plot line once again and produces even more heart-pounding action before the epiloque appears. Like the war and the Tet Offensive, the book ends with the frustration of men who do their jobs to the best of their ability yet still see defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. As the author suggests in his foreword, the lessons to be learned relate primarily to the dangers of the misapplication of good intentions.

From the foreword by GEN Schwarzkopf to the discouraging final exchange of dialogue among the three main characters, those unfamiliar with the Vietnam War can learn a great deal about those frustrating times--and some of the inherent ironies--in the pages of this novel. The amount of detailed, authentic knowledge displayed is impressive--everything about the book rings true. J.M. Olejniczak, Editor in Chief, ASSEMBLY Magazine, Special Forces-Vietnam

A very good book about General Schwarzkoph"s life. This book tells of his youth in New Jersey. We next get to read about his stay in Iran while his father is stationed there. The next phase of his life is West Point and his graduation. His tour of duty in the Army also makes for interesting reading. The general's tour of duty in Vietnam tells of his experiences serving in this conflict. The next war that he serves in is very well detailed. His time of service in the Gulf War saw him becokme one of the major and dominant person- nalities of this conflict. The decisions made by the General saw the nation of Iraq brought to it's knees by the U.S. and their allies. This book was a very good read. I enjoyed it immensely.

While it's been many years since I was in the army, reading this book, as I followed the details of both Schwarzkopf's personal and public life, I felt as though I was there with him. And I was comfortable metaphorically traveling through the life of a born determined soldier.

Regardless of what you may think of the Gulf War, or of the military, this is a wonderful story about someone who is determined to live the life that he has been sent here to live.

"It Doesn't Take a Hero," reflects his message, "No matter your history, or the history of the organization in which you most identify with, you can still reach your highest dreams."

This book will make you laugh quite a bit, as you follow his determination to avoid politics, and remain true to his basic soldiering identity. This is not to say that he would be less of a leader, nor less of a person to have aimed for a political position. He became the soldier that all of his life experiences led him to be.

As I read this, I could almost hear his voice, jokes and all.

Enjoy!

One of the things that stood out, and something most probably don't know about Gen. Schwarzkopf, is what a truly interesting life he had. Living all over the world, he absorbed a lot of the culture which certainly helped him later in life, and especially during the Gulf War.

Having been in the military, I was struck at his absolute love and admiration he had for the "grunts" in the field. He loved every one of them....something you don't often see much of.

I lent my copy of this book to my father to read, and have never gotten it back. I only wish I could have gotten a hardcover copy when it first came out. Go ahead...spend the money and read a book which is truly worth reading.

This coffee table book was okay, no better or no worse than the others that were put together for West Point's bicentennial. But, I think pictures, whether beautiful or just okay, are substantially empty momentos -- not momentos at all -- with little in the way of meaning or value. There is no substitute for the real thing. I recommend that you personally visit West Point and take the tour --- and take pictures with you in them.

For West Point fans interested in its bicentennial, I recommend "West Point: Two Centuries.." by Robert Cowley. It is like the other lovely books, "West Point: The First 200 Years", "West Point: The Bicentennial Book", and "The Spirit of West Point" in that it is a coffee table book with great pictures, except it has a collection of essays written by well-known highly paid writers. For both the general population and West Point fans, I also recommend "West Point: Character Leadership Education...Thomas Jefferson" by Norman Thomas Remick. It is an easy historical and philosophical cosmology of the USA and West Point that everyone would do well to know, including the world of Islam.

Collaboratively compiled by Robert Cowley and Thomas Guinzburg, featuring an introduction by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, and superbly enhanced with contributions from a number of noted historians and writers including Stephen Ambrose, William F. Buckley Jr., David Halberstam, Arthur Miller, George Plimpton, Tom Wicker, and Cecilia Holland, West Point: Two Centuries Of Honor And Tradition is an illustrated bicentennial celebration of the endurance and legacy of the United States Military Academy of West Point. Full-color photographs on nearly every page embellish this fascinating, informative, and very highly recommended history of America's oldest (and arguably most prestigious) military academy.

The book is written by a respected US Gov Official. He has nothing to gain from writing this book but the contentment of disseminating the reality of US involvement in the middle east. Since writing the book, he has been chastised for being unpatriotic and even anti-semitic - all these reaction being confirmations of guilt. There is little subjectivity in this book - in fact it is not invigorating. Rather, Clark works through hard fact, in an appropriate level of detail, to describe just how misled the general public can be about war, and the incredible effects of sensationalist media and gov propaganda on the collective opinion. Read It.

Since the British lost their grip on the Middle-East, the U.S. have taken over. Mr. Clark very accurately describes how the role of the U.S. during the Gulf war fits into the bigger picture of how the U.S. have tried (and succeeded) for decades to remain the world's number one power. At first, I only wanted to read the book because I had some little doubts about the objectivity of the information that we received via the media. On the whole, I agreed that action was needed, and that the war against Iraq could not be avoided. Until I read this book...It was like shells fell from my eyes. I realise now that not only there was a lot more violence used against Iraq than we were told, and that the purpose of this war was not to get Iraq out of Kuwait (which was indeed the 19th province of Iraq before England "created" Kuwait out of it in 1922), but to cripple an entire nation for decades to come. But also that this war was carefully planned by the U.S. for years. Mr. Clark shows this with countless examples, that make you say to yourself: "yes, I always had doubts about that". One of them is that although the CIA was already aware for sixth months that during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq used poison gas against the kurds in the North of Iraq, it never revealled this information to the press until after the Iran-Iraq ceasefire in 1988, 3 hours before an Iraqi delegate arrived in the U.S. and gave a press conference. This delegate was rather taken by surprise by the questions he got at this press-conference. I can hardly exagerate the need for everybody to read this book, and learn what price the Iraqi people had to pay to secure U.S. access to cheap oil...that's what bothers me most: this war was not about democracy or human rights, it was about money and power only. And by the way: all this talk about U.S. attempts to eliminate Mr. Hussein is, of course, nonsense. The U.S. still need him in the saddle because he gives the U.S. the excuse for presence in the Gulf and maintaining the economic sanctions. READ THIS BOOK!!! And see, among other things, that not only the Iraqi people were informed very subjectively by their media. We were also by ours.

An excellent book, throughly footnoted and straight forward. Don't pay any attention to the previous reviewer who comes of as some sawed off war hack who hasn't even read the book to start with.Since he doesnt agree with Clark, he resorts to character assassination of this great man..shows the mindset of "if you're not with me, you're against me." Clark does an excellent job in exposing the US for its terror campaign in the Middle East, not just the Iraq affair. If you have open mind and a consciousness and persistance for the facts, this book is for you...if not, than keep away from this book as it may cause problems to your "patriotic" brainwashed mindset.

Jack Anderson, the author, has been writing different sorts of books for over forty years now. His primary collection of books are in the category of biography. He enjoys writing about prominent and eminent individuals that have somehow impacted society in one way or another. He was born in the United States and is now a retired author.

Norman Schwarzkopf was born into a strict conservative family. His father, a war hero in WWII, was set to have Norman follow in his footsteps. How right was he. Norman ended up graduating at the top of his class in high school as well as in college at West Point. He excelled at the sophisticated military schol which led him into politics and also a family. He met his future wife at a bar during college and ended up marrying after graduating. Through politics, Norman was the main commander in Vietnam as well as the Gulf War. He was awarded two Purple Hearts for his courage and dignity. This earned him his promulgation and fame in the area of war. After fighting in the east, the book went on to explain his personal life. Fishing, reading, family, and football were all personal likings of Norman. As he had children, he can only hope to pass on his family tradition, as his dad sure did.