RaveThe Daily Beast...a thoroughly researched and compelling new account ... Bowden clearly did what journalists are supposed to do when conducting these sorts of interviews: He listened. Very closely. This is as much a book about what happens to peoples’ hearts, minds, and bodies in the swirling chaos of urban combat as it is a history of a specific battle and an assessment of its strategic significance ... With a novelist’s eye for evoking the grim atmospherics of a hellish locale and the characters within it, Bowden reconstructs dozens of scenes of heart-pounding combat, where primordial violence and fear mix with courage, audacity, desperation, elation, and devastating loss ... Very few books about the Vietnam War aimed at a general audience paint a nuanced portrait of America’s enemy. Hue 1968 is one of the few. It offers readers a deeply informed exploration of the experiences and thoughts of commanders and ordinary troops, and of their non-combatant supporters.
