U de Recife finished reading A History of the Vietnamese by K. W. Taylor
The book is long. But Vietnamese history is both long and complicated. The author best summarizes the painful experience of the Vietnamese journey by saying that, "As this book demonstrates, the Vietnamese past is, among other things, a great swath of failed experiments in social organization and governance." That's also my feeling.
I do hope that Vietnamese people may learn from its complicated past in order to build a brighter, less painful future.
