100 books like Economic Reform and Development in Vietnam

This book gives an early perspective on Vietnam’s reforms and economic growth. It follows and complements a book by Le Dang Doanh published by the National Australian University in Australia in 1992 written from a similar perspective.

The book is based largely on Vietnamese early sources of data and information. It presents an analysis of the main features of economic policy reforms in Vietnam, their socioeconomic impact, and several major theoretical and practical problems Vietnam faced on its path to development.

For readers interested in a sectoral analysis of Vietnam’s reforms and economic growth, the book provides a useful account of one major area of reform in Vietnam, namely education.

Coupled with domestic training and foreign capital inflows, this education sector and its reforms can be said to be a principal contributor to the country’s development and growth. The book also discusses the reform’s rationale and issues and, for policy analysis, describes the consequences for the sector and the economy in recent years.

This is a useful book to understand the basic problems and achievements of a socialist country’s move towards a globalized and free market system.

This book is a version of the authors’ previous work published by the South East Asia Institute. As a contribution to the specific theme, it first provides a description of Vietnam’s reforms and development. It also discusses a number of special features of this policy, including outcomes, pro and con analysis, and obstacles. 

For readers interested in sectoral analysis and especially labour studies, the book discusses the transformation of employment relations in Vietnam since Doi Moi in 1987. These relations have been a key part of Vietnam’s reforms and a necessary pre-condition to the country’s long-awaited WTO membership in 2007.

The book first examines the nature of employment reforms, analyses the motivation behind new policy initiatives, and then examines the detail of reforms in a range of business enterprises. The book’s sources of information are based on extensive original research.

Twenty chapters and 732 pages, not including the Preface, Acknowledgements, Introduction, and Chronology, of the history of the Vietnam War. From the Preface, you are thrown into a photograph-rich hardback book that covers the beginnings of what lured the French to Indochina—trade, to the final surrender in April 1975. Gritty, sometimes horrifying black and white pictures jump out at you from the pages. There are over 2,000 photographs and maps inside the book. It is truly the book for anyone interested in the Vietnam War.

This work is thorough and informative on the US invasion and defeat but unlike many books on the war also provides extensive discussion of Vietnam’s long history, which dates back more than two millennia. It covers Vietnam’s contentious relations with China and France.

In a rescue-gone-wrong, Reeder’s chopper went down, landing on its side and leaving the pilot frantically attempting to disentangle himself from the safety harness to escape the burning craft. Years later, after relaying this story to a large audience, Reeder was told by a fellow veteran that he had witnessed the incident and had Reeder in his gunsight, intending to save him from burning to death. The would-be shooter had looked away an instant, and when ready to fire, found Reeder gone. Reeder managed to evade the enemy for a time but was eventually captured and subjected to unfathomable cruelty and deprivation.

I loved Waltzing With The Dragons for its autobiographical sense of history and description of mother/daughter bonds that are truly universal. 

The story begins in 1922 with Ly, the daughter of one of the last Mandarins in north Vietnam, who flees an arranged marriage at thirteen to stay with her father’s friends, a French couple, and lives through the WWII Japanese occupation, finally fleeing to the South where she falls in love with a French Army doctor and gives birth to a daughter, Mai-Tam, in 1952. 

Mai-Tam, who is Eurasian and never feels she belongs, grows up in the shadow of the American-Vietnam war. The novel ends in 1967, preserving a mother-daughter kinship that sustains migration and separation. 

I recommend this book because my author friend, John Schembra, and I served together in Vietnam. He drew on his experiences to write a wonderful novel about the Military Police in Long Binh/Bien Hoa during the Tet Offensive in 1968, The reader is taken back to that war with believable characters, historical settings, and a great plot. Reading his book helped me write my story, set during the actual time we were there. He helped teach me how to write.

Randy was a military policeman with the 615th MP Company in Vietnam in 1967, The 615th patrolled the entire Long Binh complex, which was approximately 50 miles around, with over 30,000 men stationed on the post. His letters offered the reader an honest appraisal of the life of a Military Policeman 10,000 miles from home.