The Vietnam War

I’ve just spent a little over two weeks working my way through this 600-page history of the conflict. It’s thorough, even-handed, very well-written. Not exactly a page-turner – how could it be? – but never dull or so filled with detail and fact it becomes a chore to finish.

Here’s the thing, though; now that I have finished the book, and I’m watching the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick television series it accompanies, I’m startled by how much I’ve already forgotten. The things I remember are the things I already knew about before I started reading – the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, the Buddhist monk protests, the battle at Ia Drang… 

It makes me wonder how often we need to study history for something to sink in until it’s there in our heads and is going to stay there. Because this is a really good book – packed with masses of striking photographs – and yet here I am just a week after finishing it, knowing there’s so much I’ve already forgotten.

It’s a puzzle.