Land of Frozen Laughter

John Lewallen, author of Ecology of Devastation: Indochina (Penguin Books, 1972), offers an intense two-year immersion in Vietnam during the era of the 1968 Tet Offensive. War historians will be interested in the ground-level reports of military strategy and battles, told through intimate portraits of soldiers and civilians, Vietnamese, Chams, and Raglai Montagnards. Travel with Lewallen as he struggles to do community projects as one of the 400 International Voluntary Services to serve in Vietnam, becoming an angry antiwar activist hunted by an assassination team. Portraits of "G.I. Vietnam," the macabre world of bars, bases and brothels where American troops met Vietnamese culture, and a surrealistic tour of Saigon's night life awaiting the final communist assault, are timely today in understanding wartime environments.