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10,000 Days of Thunder: A History of the Vietnam War
In this truly multifaceted presentation of the conflict, both on the front lines and on the homefront, Caputo has produced what is at once an overview and a sensitive, resonant picture of the war as seen and experienced by American soldiers, the Viet Cong, North Vietnamese guerrillas, and the citizens of both South Vietnam and the United States. Covering the period from the rise of Bolshevism in Russia in the early 20th century to the American normalization of relations with Vietnam in 1995, it's an ideal source for both information and understanding. Beginning with an affecting introduction, the author then gives a history of communism and the origins of the war. Following this, the American involvement in Vietnam is traced in numerous two- to four-page sections dealing with various aspects of the conflict, such as the Viet Cong, the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the DMZ, and the draft. Each section has a quick facts box that highlights the main issues surrounding each topic. Caputo's prose is clear and direct, and the award-winning photos, both black and white and color, add an immediacy that sets this title apart from more conventional treatments. The glossary is detailed and informative, and the bibliography is a veritable gold mine of sound sources. This is the book of choice for libraries serving today's students.
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 27, 2005
16 people are currently reading
273 people want to read
About the author
Philip Caputo
37 books324 followersAmerican author and journalist. Author of 18 books, including the upcoming MEMORY AND DESIRE (Sept. 2023). Best known for
A Rumor of War,
a best-selling memoir of his experiences during the Vietnam War. Website: PhilipCaputo.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
December 19, 2009
This is marketed as young adult/teen, but I'd bet that most adults who pick it up will learn more and understand more deeply than after living through the events themselves. Tremendously more effective than any history textbook could ever hope to be.
September 14, 2018
Because I have read a lot about the Vietnam War, I was interested in seeing how the conflict would be presented to young readers (ages 9 to 12 according to the publisher). Accordingly, I was not expecting to learn anything new, but I was surprised to discover unknown details.
Caputo presents events in roughly chronological order in extremely short chapters. Each chapter begins with a call-of box of “quick facts.” These were interesting. For example, one described how American children went to school in reinforced buses before the families of men serving in Vietnam were sent home when the country became too dangerous. Another mentions soldiers didn’t wear underwear because of the risk of jungle rot. Some of the material in the call-out boxes was presented like trivia, as in the above examples, but some of the material was a summary of critical information, such as the role that each president from Truman to Ford played. I wished there had been more consistency in that feature.
The book eskews details for a broad presentation. To some extent, this made sense to me because of the audience; however, some of the battles were condensed so much that the description was nearly perfunctory and much of the political intrigue (e.g., the coup against Diem) was omitted entirely. On the other hand, the book included a chapter on the Australian and New Zealand military contributions which is often ignored. Another described naval operations I hadn’t read about before. Caputo also made a clear link between defoliation agents and birth defects (though he unfortunately used the term “mentally retarded”).
The historical facts are augmented with recollections from veterans. Japanese- American Vincent Okamoto, who was later interviewed for Ken Burn and Lynn Novak’s masterful documentary, The Vietnam War, discusses nearly being mistaken for the enemy because of his Asian features. These memories augment the book but I wish that Caputo had included references regarding the sources of the quotations.
10,000 Days of Thunder contains a wealth of photographs, many of which I haven’t seen before, but the quality is uneven.
I also found that Caputo made some unusual if not distressing and biased choices in the narrative. He characterizes Viet Cong and North Vietnamese operations as terrorist attack. He claimed that attacks after the Paris Peace Accords (1973) showed that “North Vietnam had never lost its desire to conquer South Vietnam.” A more accurate description would claim that North Vietnam never lost its desire to unify the country and eliminate foreign influence.In a caption for a photograph of female soldiers of the South Vietnamese People’s Self-Defense Force, he refers to the women as “girls.”
Most disturbingly, I found that Caputo was biased against Johnson and for Nixon. He intimated that if Johnson had been honest with the country, the public would have been behind the war. That assumes (to my mind incorrectly) that there was a legitimate rationale for going to war in Vietnam. Caputo blames the media for the North’s political victory after Tet, faulting them for broadcasting the immediate reactions of soldiers and the damage to the American Embassy in Saigon without offering sufficient analysis. Caputo glossed over Nixon’s misdeeds, including his sabotage of the peace talks prior to the 1968 election.
I also noticed an egregious error. Caputo asserts that General Giap conceptualized and oversaw the 1968 Tet Offensive. In actuality, he was opposed to the operation which was spearheaded by Le Duan who sidelined Giap by sending him to Hungary for medical treatment.
The book concludes with a chapter on the Vietnam Memorial and one on Vietnam today. I found the ending quite abrupt and thought the book would have benefited with a final concluding chapter.
Overall though I had looked forward to reading this book and had greatly enjoyed Caputo’s Rumors of War, because of the biases and incorrect information, I was ultimately disappointed in it.
Caputo presents events in roughly chronological order in extremely short chapters. Each chapter begins with a call-of box of “quick facts.” These were interesting. For example, one described how American children went to school in reinforced buses before the families of men serving in Vietnam were sent home when the country became too dangerous. Another mentions soldiers didn’t wear underwear because of the risk of jungle rot. Some of the material in the call-out boxes was presented like trivia, as in the above examples, but some of the material was a summary of critical information, such as the role that each president from Truman to Ford played. I wished there had been more consistency in that feature.
The book eskews details for a broad presentation. To some extent, this made sense to me because of the audience; however, some of the battles were condensed so much that the description was nearly perfunctory and much of the political intrigue (e.g., the coup against Diem) was omitted entirely. On the other hand, the book included a chapter on the Australian and New Zealand military contributions which is often ignored. Another described naval operations I hadn’t read about before. Caputo also made a clear link between defoliation agents and birth defects (though he unfortunately used the term “mentally retarded”).
The historical facts are augmented with recollections from veterans. Japanese- American Vincent Okamoto, who was later interviewed for Ken Burn and Lynn Novak’s masterful documentary, The Vietnam War, discusses nearly being mistaken for the enemy because of his Asian features. These memories augment the book but I wish that Caputo had included references regarding the sources of the quotations.
10,000 Days of Thunder contains a wealth of photographs, many of which I haven’t seen before, but the quality is uneven.
I also found that Caputo made some unusual if not distressing and biased choices in the narrative. He characterizes Viet Cong and North Vietnamese operations as terrorist attack. He claimed that attacks after the Paris Peace Accords (1973) showed that “North Vietnam had never lost its desire to conquer South Vietnam.” A more accurate description would claim that North Vietnam never lost its desire to unify the country and eliminate foreign influence.In a caption for a photograph of female soldiers of the South Vietnamese People’s Self-Defense Force, he refers to the women as “girls.”
Most disturbingly, I found that Caputo was biased against Johnson and for Nixon. He intimated that if Johnson had been honest with the country, the public would have been behind the war. That assumes (to my mind incorrectly) that there was a legitimate rationale for going to war in Vietnam. Caputo blames the media for the North’s political victory after Tet, faulting them for broadcasting the immediate reactions of soldiers and the damage to the American Embassy in Saigon without offering sufficient analysis. Caputo glossed over Nixon’s misdeeds, including his sabotage of the peace talks prior to the 1968 election.
I also noticed an egregious error. Caputo asserts that General Giap conceptualized and oversaw the 1968 Tet Offensive. In actuality, he was opposed to the operation which was spearheaded by Le Duan who sidelined Giap by sending him to Hungary for medical treatment.
The book concludes with a chapter on the Vietnam Memorial and one on Vietnam today. I found the ending quite abrupt and thought the book would have benefited with a final concluding chapter.
Overall though I had looked forward to reading this book and had greatly enjoyed Caputo’s Rumors of War, because of the biases and incorrect information, I was ultimately disappointed in it.
July 15, 2013
02 November 2005 10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER: A HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR by Philip Caputo, Simon & Schuster/Byron Preiss Visual Publications, September 2005, ISBN: 0-689-86231-8
"Last electric Sunday morning,
Waiting in the Park for the dawn."
--Paul Kantner (1970)
I arrived at the Park a little while past dawn on Sunday, greeted by vendors who were still setting up, and long lines of blue Porta-Potties that were standing shoulder to shoulder at attention. The morning prayer ritual was just about to commence. Mayor Gavin Newsom had declared it "Chet Helms Day." We streamed into Speedway Meadows by the thousands to spend the day ingesting sights, smells, and musical sets provided by scores of aging musicians who'd played at Helms' Avalon Ballroom back in the Sixties. For me, having been slightly too young and on the wrong coast to have experienced those days first-hand, having snuck into a Long Island drive-in theater in high school (None of us had a car!) to see many of these same musicians (and some of the same audience members) captured in the Woodstock and Fillmore: The Last Days movies, Sunday served as community get-together, musical history lesson, dream fulfillment experience, and peace rally.
"Give me an F!" "F!"
"Give me a U!" "U!"
"Give me a C!" "C!"
"Give me an K!" "K!"
"What's that spell?"
"What's that spell?"
"What's that spell?"
"What's that spell?"
--Country Joe McDonald leading "The Fish Cheer," 10/30/2005
On the long crack-of-dawn bus ride down to San Franciso Sunday morning, I experienced Philip Caputo's 10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER: A HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR, a powerful record of the sights and significance of those days. As with the San Francisco music scene of the Sixties, I was just a couple of years too young to have needed to make any life-altering decisions regarding The Draft.
But just as surely as I grew up listening to that music on the radio and seeing those movies at the drive-in and my first Dead show at the Nassau Coliseum, I also grew up experiencing the War. But suddenly that War is so far in the past.
"Every year they say we're going to get right up to the present, but we always get stuck in the Industrial Revolution. We got to World War I in seventh grade--who knew there had been a war with the whole world." -- main character Melinda Sordino in Laurie Halse Anderson's, SPEAK
10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER is an incredibly timely book for adolescents who could well be looking war in the face in a few years. As a tenth-grade World History student standing in protest on the Capitol steps, listening to Phil Ochs and Coretta Scott King, I looked back at World War II which had ended a quarter-century earlier as if it were ancient history. For today's tenth-grade World History students, as the 2,000th American soldier falls in Iraq and Scooter Libby gets indicted as part of a tangled web of lies about the current War, the fall of Saigon is even further back into the past for them than Hiroshima was for me.
"The Vietnam War has three dubious distinctions: It was the longest and the most unpopular war in American history and the only war America ever lost."
Is it possible for a book about war to be beautiful? If so, this is that book. Designed with a large trim size, every right-hand page throughout the book contains a vivid close-up from the past of the children and adults who found themselves at the epicenter of this defining chapter in world and U.S. history. On the left-facing pages there is a combination of text, "Quick Facts," and smaller illustrations and graphics. The tale told by the text begins all the way back at the beginnings of Communism so that readers are provided with a real understanding of how it came to be that those of my generation watched filmed battle scenes and flag-draped coffins from halfway around the world on our childhood dinnertime news broadcasts.
Some of Caputo's "Quick Facts":
In 1954, following the French departure from Vietnam, President Eisenhower asked the army's chief of staff, General Matthew Ridgeway, to conduct a study of what American military aid would be needed to help the South Vietnamese defeat the Communists in Vietnam. Ridgeway reported that the United States would have to commit between 500,000 and 1 million men. President Eisenhower decided this was an impossible option, so instead chose to send minimal aid in the form of weapons, supplies, economic aid, and military and political advisors.
--Most troops arrived in Vietnam in airplanes. For many, the first memory of Vietnam was the 'wall' of intense heat combined with the pungent smells of sweat, dung, rotting vegetation, food, and smoke that would hit them the moment they stepped out of an airplane's cabin.
--A reliable evaluation of the number of Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange is almost impossible. But a team of Canadian experts conducted an independent study of the contaminated regions in the Alvoi Valley in 1999. Their findings revealed that children born in sprayed areas were more than 8 times as likely to suffer hernias and more than 3 times as likely to have cleft palates, be mentally retarded, and have extra fingers and toes.
--The Selective Service System was composed of almost 4,000 local draft boards and staffed by unpaid volunteers, most of whom were white males who were veterans of earlier wars. A 1966 survey of 16,638 board members of the draft revealed that only 1.3 percent were African American.
--During the Vietnam War, U.S. Air Force bombers and fighter-bombers dropped an estimated 6.2 million tons of bombs. This amount, which does not include bombs dropped by U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and South Vietnamese aircraft, was almost 3 times the 2.2 million tons of bombs dropped in World War II.
As a kid I learned about those small lakes called kettle-holes that were created when a chunk of ice from one of the Ice Age glaciers that formed Long Island got stuck in the dirt and melted, leaving a round lake that still exists thousands of years later.
There are areas on Long Island's South Fork where you see multiple kettle-holes near one another. One of the small-sized photographs included in Caputo's book shows an arial view of what appears to be a similar but much more intensive phenomenon in Vietnam. Only it was U.S. bombing that did the work of the epic glaciers. There are so many of those "a-ha!" moments throughout 10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER.
"You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It's there at your command"
--"Get Together," by the late Dino Valenti, as sung by his son and former bandmates, 10/30/2005
Philip Caputo's background as both a Pulitzer-winning journalist and a Vietnam Vet is consistently evidenced by the combination of wisdom, factual matter, and supporting materials that make 10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER both a great read and a great and essential teaching resource.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_... http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/facult...
"Last electric Sunday morning,
Waiting in the Park for the dawn."
--Paul Kantner (1970)
I arrived at the Park a little while past dawn on Sunday, greeted by vendors who were still setting up, and long lines of blue Porta-Potties that were standing shoulder to shoulder at attention. The morning prayer ritual was just about to commence. Mayor Gavin Newsom had declared it "Chet Helms Day." We streamed into Speedway Meadows by the thousands to spend the day ingesting sights, smells, and musical sets provided by scores of aging musicians who'd played at Helms' Avalon Ballroom back in the Sixties. For me, having been slightly too young and on the wrong coast to have experienced those days first-hand, having snuck into a Long Island drive-in theater in high school (None of us had a car!) to see many of these same musicians (and some of the same audience members) captured in the Woodstock and Fillmore: The Last Days movies, Sunday served as community get-together, musical history lesson, dream fulfillment experience, and peace rally.
"Give me an F!" "F!"
"Give me a U!" "U!"
"Give me a C!" "C!"
"Give me an K!" "K!"
"What's that spell?"
"What's that spell?"
"What's that spell?"
"What's that spell?"
--Country Joe McDonald leading "The Fish Cheer," 10/30/2005
On the long crack-of-dawn bus ride down to San Franciso Sunday morning, I experienced Philip Caputo's 10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER: A HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR, a powerful record of the sights and significance of those days. As with the San Francisco music scene of the Sixties, I was just a couple of years too young to have needed to make any life-altering decisions regarding The Draft.
But just as surely as I grew up listening to that music on the radio and seeing those movies at the drive-in and my first Dead show at the Nassau Coliseum, I also grew up experiencing the War. But suddenly that War is so far in the past.
"Every year they say we're going to get right up to the present, but we always get stuck in the Industrial Revolution. We got to World War I in seventh grade--who knew there had been a war with the whole world." -- main character Melinda Sordino in Laurie Halse Anderson's, SPEAK
10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER is an incredibly timely book for adolescents who could well be looking war in the face in a few years. As a tenth-grade World History student standing in protest on the Capitol steps, listening to Phil Ochs and Coretta Scott King, I looked back at World War II which had ended a quarter-century earlier as if it were ancient history. For today's tenth-grade World History students, as the 2,000th American soldier falls in Iraq and Scooter Libby gets indicted as part of a tangled web of lies about the current War, the fall of Saigon is even further back into the past for them than Hiroshima was for me.
"The Vietnam War has three dubious distinctions: It was the longest and the most unpopular war in American history and the only war America ever lost."
Is it possible for a book about war to be beautiful? If so, this is that book. Designed with a large trim size, every right-hand page throughout the book contains a vivid close-up from the past of the children and adults who found themselves at the epicenter of this defining chapter in world and U.S. history. On the left-facing pages there is a combination of text, "Quick Facts," and smaller illustrations and graphics. The tale told by the text begins all the way back at the beginnings of Communism so that readers are provided with a real understanding of how it came to be that those of my generation watched filmed battle scenes and flag-draped coffins from halfway around the world on our childhood dinnertime news broadcasts.
Some of Caputo's "Quick Facts":
In 1954, following the French departure from Vietnam, President Eisenhower asked the army's chief of staff, General Matthew Ridgeway, to conduct a study of what American military aid would be needed to help the South Vietnamese defeat the Communists in Vietnam. Ridgeway reported that the United States would have to commit between 500,000 and 1 million men. President Eisenhower decided this was an impossible option, so instead chose to send minimal aid in the form of weapons, supplies, economic aid, and military and political advisors.
--Most troops arrived in Vietnam in airplanes. For many, the first memory of Vietnam was the 'wall' of intense heat combined with the pungent smells of sweat, dung, rotting vegetation, food, and smoke that would hit them the moment they stepped out of an airplane's cabin.
--A reliable evaluation of the number of Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange is almost impossible. But a team of Canadian experts conducted an independent study of the contaminated regions in the Alvoi Valley in 1999. Their findings revealed that children born in sprayed areas were more than 8 times as likely to suffer hernias and more than 3 times as likely to have cleft palates, be mentally retarded, and have extra fingers and toes.
--The Selective Service System was composed of almost 4,000 local draft boards and staffed by unpaid volunteers, most of whom were white males who were veterans of earlier wars. A 1966 survey of 16,638 board members of the draft revealed that only 1.3 percent were African American.
--During the Vietnam War, U.S. Air Force bombers and fighter-bombers dropped an estimated 6.2 million tons of bombs. This amount, which does not include bombs dropped by U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and South Vietnamese aircraft, was almost 3 times the 2.2 million tons of bombs dropped in World War II.
As a kid I learned about those small lakes called kettle-holes that were created when a chunk of ice from one of the Ice Age glaciers that formed Long Island got stuck in the dirt and melted, leaving a round lake that still exists thousands of years later.
There are areas on Long Island's South Fork where you see multiple kettle-holes near one another. One of the small-sized photographs included in Caputo's book shows an arial view of what appears to be a similar but much more intensive phenomenon in Vietnam. Only it was U.S. bombing that did the work of the epic glaciers. There are so many of those "a-ha!" moments throughout 10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER.
"You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It's there at your command"
--"Get Together," by the late Dino Valenti, as sung by his son and former bandmates, 10/30/2005
Philip Caputo's background as both a Pulitzer-winning journalist and a Vietnam Vet is consistently evidenced by the combination of wisdom, factual matter, and supporting materials that make 10,000 DAYS OF THUNDER both a great read and a great and essential teaching resource.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_... http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/facult...
May 9, 2018
Caputo's book is a combination of personal experiences and a history of many aspects of the war. In short two page spreads, Caputo looks at many aspects of the Vietnam War, including the politics, the leaders, the presidents, the air, ground, and sea aspects, etc. Each spread also includes short factoids, along with large black and white photographs. The combination of a thorough coverage of many aspects of the war with specific experiences makes for a compelling read. The short sections work especially well for reluctant readers who have a hard time focusing on one topic. As an adult reader, I would have liked more detail on each topic, but it works well as an introduction to a complex event and the many experiences associated with it.
July 19, 2008
Recommended for gr. 6-12. A great introduction to the Vietnam War for students. Each 2-page spread covers a topic or occurrence in the events leading up to the war, the war itself, and the aftermath. One page has text, a Quick Facts box and a small picture, and the facing page is a full page photograph or map. The text is very readable. Topics include origins of the war, Agent Orange, the draft, various campaigns, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In addition to the table of contents and index, the book also contains a glossary, bibliography, a list of related web sites and an index. Highly recommended.
September 20, 2018
This primer on the Vietnam War aimed at young readers accomplishes what it sets out to do, but not without a few issues along the way.
In simplifying complex issues and events the author sometimes falls back on biased language and versions of events. For example, discussion of the Tonkin Gulf Incidents fails to mention that the second incident almost certainly didn't happen. It also simply says that the ship involved was in an area "considered international waters" without pointing out that the limits of international waters were disputed by North Vietnam that claimed the same limit as the French had before them, putting the Maddox in their claimed territorial waters when it was attacked.
Omissions like this make the book less useful than it could be, but it's still a decent overview of the war.
In simplifying complex issues and events the author sometimes falls back on biased language and versions of events. For example, discussion of the Tonkin Gulf Incidents fails to mention that the second incident almost certainly didn't happen. It also simply says that the ship involved was in an area "considered international waters" without pointing out that the limits of international waters were disputed by North Vietnam that claimed the same limit as the French had before them, putting the Maddox in their claimed territorial waters when it was attacked.
Omissions like this make the book less useful than it could be, but it's still a decent overview of the war.
January 16, 2019
Excellent coverage of the Vietnam War. No stone left unturned. Contains political insights, military strategies, military campaigns, public opinion, journalism, north and south ideology, and aftermath. On every two-page spread, the right side contains a full page photograph. The left side explains a topic with just the right amount of detail to be informative, but not tedious. Every page also has a box with several quick facts.
If your library only has one book on the Vietnam War, this should be it.
If your library only has one book on the Vietnam War, this should be it.
May 9, 2019
An outstanding concise review of the entire Vietnam war timeline. The war is looked at from many, different angles. Caputo, a war vet who wrote the classic "A Rumor of War", knows the story and tells it accurately and free of the political spin.
This book is from the "scholastic" series and should be mandatory reading in high schools.
This book is from the "scholastic" series and should be mandatory reading in high schools.
Read
December 19, 2023Veteran officer of the conflict in Vietnam, mostly in the 1960s.
I was in service in the era, so I joined the local group in N. Georgia to support them.
I have many friends who served and admire their devotion to the call of the country.
Twas a messy conflict, and we spent more in money and lives than we should have, as Caputo
says in this work.
I was in service in the era, so I joined the local group in N. Georgia to support them.
I have many friends who served and admire their devotion to the call of the country.
Twas a messy conflict, and we spent more in money and lives than we should have, as Caputo
says in this work.
December 3, 2018
I read this in a day because it is an abbreviated history/timeline of our involvement in Vietnam, with many pictures. I read it to accompany The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien so that I could refresh my memory of that era and that war. This book brought it all back with blinding clarity.
December 17, 2018
The best book about the Vitnaniam war.
October 29, 2019
A picture book with some serious text. Not a bad combo.
November 8, 2021
this book was so good I would read it forever.
June 24, 2022
Interesting history book with stunning pictures. We read this in our homeschool Dialectic history studies.
July 6, 2022
An Illustrated book by the writer Caputo who wrote "A Rumor of War" Its a good book. Good Review .
Find it and read it.
Find it and read it.
July 21, 2016
Book Review: 10,000 Days of Thunder by Philip Caputo
This book is about the history of the Vietnam War. The author tells you about how North Vietnam are communist and want to take over South Vietnam who are democratic. President Johnson decides to help South Vietnam by sending over 500,000 soldiers. The U.S. Army does most of the fighting against the NVA, in the end the NVA and Viet Cong won the war. Caputo’s purpose of writing this book is to let the audience know the Vietnam War was very long and difficult to succeed even with help of an allie. 10,000 Days of Thunder gave the audience insight and understanding. It shows us that when in war anything and everything can happen and sometimes you have to do the wrong thing for the greater good. 10,000 Days of Thunder is educational. It gives the audience the information that they might have not learned in school.
The book's impact on the audience is that sometimes you have to destroy and kill to get people to negotiate. North Vietnam didn't want negotiate so the Americans,"Called the 'Christmas Bombing' by the United States press, B-52 bombers and other planes attacked strategies targets and the antiaircraft defenses in Hanoi and in North Vietnam's major port city, Haiphong, as well as other locations," (106). This impacts the audience because they many people died because of what U.S. Army wanted to end the war. This will have a lasting value because every war you have to kill someone to come on top. War will always be very cruel, heartbreaking, violent, and more. War is important to our history and has made us stronger.
The book 10,000 Days of Thunder is written quite well. It informs you by sections of what happened first to what happened last. It goes into detail about certain battles and what life was like everyday as a soldier. There are so many things that happened during the Vietnam War like the civil rights movement. The book also has facts like,"During the truce that existed between North and South Vietnam, approximately 51,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed in 1973 and 1974," (108). The book has lots of good pictures to show what the text looked like.
I found the book not captivating at all. The topic just wasn't my cup of tea. I sort of related to some of the soldiers because they didn't want to be there and feared what would come next when in battle. One soldier said, "Unless we are prepared to surrender to the enemy we must negotiate from a position of strength," (94). I found the book quite boring because I am not interested in war. The book is very serious. It talks about death, bombings, diseases, and more.
The greatest strength of the book is that it deeply informs you about how, what, when, why, and where of the Vietnam War. The greatest weaknesses are two many pages for a picture book and big words that are hard to prenouse. Also this book is good only if you need to do a project or report on the Vietnam War. I would not recommend this book to my friends. This book is for people who are really interested in history of war. This book is also very long and boring.
This book is about the history of the Vietnam War. The author tells you about how North Vietnam are communist and want to take over South Vietnam who are democratic. President Johnson decides to help South Vietnam by sending over 500,000 soldiers. The U.S. Army does most of the fighting against the NVA, in the end the NVA and Viet Cong won the war. Caputo’s purpose of writing this book is to let the audience know the Vietnam War was very long and difficult to succeed even with help of an allie. 10,000 Days of Thunder gave the audience insight and understanding. It shows us that when in war anything and everything can happen and sometimes you have to do the wrong thing for the greater good. 10,000 Days of Thunder is educational. It gives the audience the information that they might have not learned in school.
The book's impact on the audience is that sometimes you have to destroy and kill to get people to negotiate. North Vietnam didn't want negotiate so the Americans,"Called the 'Christmas Bombing' by the United States press, B-52 bombers and other planes attacked strategies targets and the antiaircraft defenses in Hanoi and in North Vietnam's major port city, Haiphong, as well as other locations," (106). This impacts the audience because they many people died because of what U.S. Army wanted to end the war. This will have a lasting value because every war you have to kill someone to come on top. War will always be very cruel, heartbreaking, violent, and more. War is important to our history and has made us stronger.
The book 10,000 Days of Thunder is written quite well. It informs you by sections of what happened first to what happened last. It goes into detail about certain battles and what life was like everyday as a soldier. There are so many things that happened during the Vietnam War like the civil rights movement. The book also has facts like,"During the truce that existed between North and South Vietnam, approximately 51,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed in 1973 and 1974," (108). The book has lots of good pictures to show what the text looked like.
I found the book not captivating at all. The topic just wasn't my cup of tea. I sort of related to some of the soldiers because they didn't want to be there and feared what would come next when in battle. One soldier said, "Unless we are prepared to surrender to the enemy we must negotiate from a position of strength," (94). I found the book quite boring because I am not interested in war. The book is very serious. It talks about death, bombings, diseases, and more.
The greatest strength of the book is that it deeply informs you about how, what, when, why, and where of the Vietnam War. The greatest weaknesses are two many pages for a picture book and big words that are hard to prenouse. Also this book is good only if you need to do a project or report on the Vietnam War. I would not recommend this book to my friends. This book is for people who are really interested in history of war. This book is also very long and boring.
May 7, 2014
The book 10,000 Days of Thunder is a nonfiction historical book about the Vietnam War. This book would be very appealing to someone who likes factual literature. To me, the book was very boring. I like books with more of a story line. The book is set up so that there is one page with words, then a page with a picture and so on. Each page with words contains a "Quick Facts" section on the left side. I think if this book was structured with chapters, it would be more easily comprehended and interesting. However, by reading this book, you will get a much better understanding of the Vietnam war. Philip Caputo, the author of the book, probably wrote this book for people who are doing a history paper or something on the Vietnam War or for people who just like to read factual books. Overall, for people who enjoy this type of literature, the author did a very good job of providing detailed facts about the Vietnam War.
July 30, 2016
This nonfiction text provides young readers with information regarding our country’s most controversial war: The Vietnam War. Philip Caputo narrates historical anecdotes from soldiers and civilians, both American and Vietnamese, and discusses a series of events including Vietnam under French colonial rule, American Intervention, the Tet Offensive, and finally the fall of Saigon. The black and white photographs, as well as key campaign and battle maps included in the book add to the historical accuracy and realness of Caputo’s accounts.
As a classroom teacher, I would further introduce the topic of the Vietnam War with this book. I would focus on both the timelines provided on the inside front cover, as well as the Fall of Saigon. This narrative is written in student friendly language and is historically accurate. It also relates to the social justice issue surrounding Ha’s fleeing of Vietnam in Thannhai Lai's novel, Inside Out and Back Again.
As a classroom teacher, I would further introduce the topic of the Vietnam War with this book. I would focus on both the timelines provided on the inside front cover, as well as the Fall of Saigon. This narrative is written in student friendly language and is historically accurate. It also relates to the social justice issue surrounding Ha’s fleeing of Vietnam in Thannhai Lai's novel, Inside Out and Back Again.
November 27, 2016
This is a filler book. Someone needed a book about this war in their list of published works. So Marx gets a full page picture, although he has nothing to do with a colonial war.
Otherwise it is written from, guess what, a slanted point of view. So on page 24 the Viet Cong started "to commit acts of terrorism." Yet on page 6, the poor butchers like the author feel disoriented by the lack of uniforms. "They were indistinguishable from civilians. A rice-paddy farmer plowing his field behind a water buffalo was as likely to be a guerilla fighter as not. it was often impossible for an American solider to tell who was the enemy and who wasn't until he was shot at - and then it would be too late." Not counting the laments about how many of his fellow fighters were dead or how tough was to move in a tropical jungle. The guy sounds like the mother telling the child "eat up, there are starving children in Africa" as if the child's obesity would cure the lack of nutrients in Africa.
Otherwise it is written from, guess what, a slanted point of view. So on page 24 the Viet Cong started "to commit acts of terrorism." Yet on page 6, the poor butchers like the author feel disoriented by the lack of uniforms. "They were indistinguishable from civilians. A rice-paddy farmer plowing his field behind a water buffalo was as likely to be a guerilla fighter as not. it was often impossible for an American solider to tell who was the enemy and who wasn't until he was shot at - and then it would be too late." Not counting the laments about how many of his fellow fighters were dead or how tough was to move in a tropical jungle. The guy sounds like the mother telling the child "eat up, there are starving children in Africa" as if the child's obesity would cure the lack of nutrients in Africa.
April 1, 2010
This nonfiction account of the Vietnam War is told through black & white photos, "quick facts" sections, and the author's real-life experience in Vietnam. I like that the book is separated into distinct categories. The author does a nice job of breaking up war facts and stories into manageable sections, so I did not feel overwhelmed by the information as I read. The photographs in the book are stunning and poignant. I enjoyed the "quick facts" section on most pages; they serve as a run-down or summary of each page's main idea. The author also does a nice job of offering a subjective look at the war. He addresses the issues, such as Communism, violence, and negotiations, from all perspectives, making this an informational and palatable read. I can see the value of having this book available in a middle school and/or high school classroom.
April 3, 2014
I was disappointed that I couldn't like this jam-packed book more. My major reasons for disliking it is the lack of narrative with every page or every other page being a different chapter that while generally chronological, didn't flow well. With a fully-blown picture on every right-page, it think that also disrupted the flow.
What I did like was that it was FULL of information. He even crammed it in to little quick facts on top of the writing of each chapter as well as pictures with captions. I just wished that the book either was longer to flow better or written differently so as to capture the importance of every battle, fight, or political issue related to the Vietnam War. It absolutely covers everything from massacres and offensives to anti-war protests, music, women, Vietnamese, as well as the politics and presidencies and what was happening state-side.
What I did like was that it was FULL of information. He even crammed it in to little quick facts on top of the writing of each chapter as well as pictures with captions. I just wished that the book either was longer to flow better or written differently so as to capture the importance of every battle, fight, or political issue related to the Vietnam War. It absolutely covers everything from massacres and offensives to anti-war protests, music, women, Vietnamese, as well as the politics and presidencies and what was happening state-side.
October 27, 2014
10,000 Days of Thunder was the great resource covering many aspects of the Vietnam War to aid myself and my daughter in our U.S. History studies. Each day we would read 3 or 4 of the sections, which often led to other research on youtube or i-tunes to hear songs mentioned or to delve deeper into a person discussed in the book. The chronological layout is beautiful; half filled with large detailed photographs, numerous addition information covered in the “quick facts,” a glossary, websites information, and a detailed timeline. This book is perfect for high school age students learning about our longest and most controversial war.
July 5, 2015
This overview of the French and American ham-handed involvement in Vietnam is intended for young readers, but would be unlikely to sustain the interest of most of those who didn't grow up with Vietnam War footage on their TVs. As a teenager in 1966-1975, I found American actions horrifying; this book helped me assemble my memories into the historical record, reaffirm my fear of arrogance and power, and flinch at exuberant July 4 celebrations of American greatness. And yet it is pretty cool that Vietnam war protests turned public opinion and forced the U.S. to withdrawal from its doomed war.
June 2, 2010
Written about the Vietnam War at about the 6/7th grade level. I found the short descriptions and wide-spread use of pictures very helpful in understanding what the war was all about. Since I was in my teens in the 60's, I should have known all of this already, but it was all very confusing as reported on the TV, much the way the Iraq conflict is confusing now. Clear, well-written, understandable and interesting.
May 1, 2016
I read this on the back of Caputo's magnificent 'A Rumor of War' and it took me a couple of pages of bemusement before realizing it is written with the aim of introducing 'young readers' to the history of the Vietnam War. It does a great job of it with an interesting narrative approach, along with captivating photographs, but it's unlikely to contain anything new to readers already familiar with the conflict.
September 14, 2011
Excellent book on everything you wanted to know about the Vietnam War. Very readable text, with extra facts and great photographs. I was a young person when this war was being waged, but this book puts everything in perspective--the whys, hows, and who--along with the historical background. This is a perfect book for middle schoolers, and even adults who would like to know more about this era.
February 11, 2012
This was written for youth/young adults but I think it's a great adult read as well. I learned a lot about the history and buildup to the Vietnam War and the war itself. It was written in snippets about specific topics/incidents rather than as a narrative history - I found it very readable. Great photos.
October 3, 2013
This is a well crafted table top display book of a difficult time in our history. I felt that the pictures showed the human suffering without being assaulting. The information was given in meaningful shorts that could be read in just a few minutes. Lots of surprising tidbits of information and interesting quotes.
December 6, 2013
A well thought out book that placed the history of the Vietnam war in a time line from begging to end.The book was not really about one man and what hes gone though like most of the other war books i read.It was more about the missions that these men as the united states military did and why they did them.
July 26, 2015
While the pictures and explanations on each page were great, the overall organization of the book felt choppy. For someone that doesn't pay a lot of attention to history and events(that's me), it seems to jump around a lot to several different topics. Some kind of connection between each section at the beginning of the page would have been nice. But it was overall an interesting read.
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