cover image NAM: A Photographic History

NAM: A Photographic History

Leo J. Daugherty, . . Metrobooks, $24.98 (600pp) ISBN 978-1-58663-083-6

Ray Bonds's The Vietnam War: The Illustrated History of the Conflict in Southeast Asia (Salamander Books) sets the bar very high for photojournalistic collections on the war. Coauthors Daugherty (Fighting Techniques of a U.S. Marine: 1941–1945), a military history professor at the online American Military University, and Mattson (The Pacific War: Campaigns of World War II), with a Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi, are outclassed by the competition. The book begins with "The Background," followed by one chapter per year for 1965–1975 and ends with a final section on the "Aftermath." Major scenes of fighting and bombing are dutifully described, without particular insight, including Laos, Hanoi, the Tet Offensive and Long Tan. Unattractively designed, the book contains over 700 color and b&w photos, a number of which are fuzzy, including an aggressively cropped version of one of the Vietnam War's most notorious images, the Pulitzer Prize–winning AP wire photo of a South Vietnamese general executing a Vietcong officer in Saigon. An equally fuzzy image of Robert F. Kennedy after he was shot in 1968 bears a caption that observes, among other things: "His killing was claimed to be a protest against the U.S. support for Israel." Most of the images are scenic, with a minimum of explicit gore—and such gore as there is looks fake because of the poor color reproduction. The particularly outdated "Aftermath" section informs us that the failure of America's involvement in the Vietnam war made "bold foreign policy moves a thing of the past," which may be news to the current U.S. Department of Defense. Although the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., is shown in two photos (inadequately), its architect, Maya Lin, is not appreciably credited. The historical maelstrom of Vietnam deserves better. (Jan.)