false 444084 3 With over half a decade of service as a war correspondent in Vietnam, John Laurence earned deserved accolades for his reportage, especially for his documentary <I>The World of Charlie Company.</I> In this superb book, <I>The Cat from Hue</I>, he returns to that time, drawing on long-buried memories to capture the confusion, deceit, and terror of the era.<p> In 1968, John Laurence unhappily found himself dodging bullets and poking among ruins of the ancient Vietnamese city of Hue, eventually wandering square into the sights of a gun held by a North Vietnamese soldier, who could easily have shot him dead but did not. It was not his first encounter with mortal danger, and not his last; as this long, intricately constructed memoir unfolds, death greets the reader on nearly every page, along with the more mundane facts of war--the language of soldiers, the things they carried, the numbed resignation to battle as "an edge against fear." (Superstition plays a role, too: Laurence figured that the "coins, charms, four-leaf clovers, religious medals and all kinds of talismans" that he kept with him would somehow shield him from bullets, as perhaps they did.) In the company of a shell-shocked kitten, the cat of his book's title, Laurence goes on to document the lives and deaths of young soldiers during the invasion of Cambodia, men who, though personally decent in the main, were part of "a monster that inflicted so much random violence and death it produced an entire new body of evil, a catalogue of cruelty that overshadowed any possible virtue that might have come from defeating the Communists."<p> Harrowing, sometimes hallucinatory, written from among the weeds and rubble, and one of the best in a crowded field, Laurence's book deserves the widest possible audience. <I>--Gregory McNamee</I> 432850 2001 The Cat from Hue: A Vietnam War Story total:70|5:31|4:24|3:14|2:1|1:0| 70 295 100 17 5 5 false false Thu Jul 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Dec 01 11:53:23 -0800 2008 Fri Oct 09 20:33:19 -0700 2009 http://www.thecatfromhue.com/doc.htm. If you haven't read the book, don't look at the website; it's a huge spoiler.
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It's been a while since I've read it from cover to cover, but I still th...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun May 13 10:41:57 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 07 10:35:27 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Sun Oct 07 19:28:39 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 07 19:30:40 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Dec 31 19:40:39 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 31 19:42:59 -0800 2007 3 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Apr 22 13:46:16 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 22 13:48:12 -0700 2008 4 0 true false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Nov 18 07:50:57 -0800 2007 Sun Nov 18 07:58:15 -0800 2007 5 0 false false Fri Oct 31 07:57:10 -0700 2008 Sun Oct 12 15:58:51 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 31 07:57:10 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Mon May 19 13:52:32 -0700 2008 Mon May 19 13:55:10 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Fri May 25 10:40:05 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 14 07:34:52 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Sat Jul 26 06:14:46 -0700 2008 Sat Jul 26 06:15:14 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Tue Oct 02 05:50:28 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 02 05:50:51 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Wed Jan 30 14:58:39 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 15:18:27 -0800 2008 5 0 false false Sun Nov 22 13:07:42 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 22 13:07:42 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Fri Nov 20 14:19:14 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 20 14:19:19 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Tue Nov 17 03:50:07 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 17 03:50:07 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=2775881