Return to Saigon: From high school in Saigon to his return there as a wounded Naval Aviator, Vietnam shaped his life

He ejects from his burning Navy jet and lands on a karst ridge near Hanoi. What follows in this meticulously researched history is a memoir of war. It is an account of one of the most implausible and heroic rescues of the air-war--and the aftermath. And the events immediately following his rescue carry the author to a secret base in Laos, then to a makeshift hospital in Saigon. The larger story, however, is of the author's complex relationship with Vietnam.

It begins in Saigon, where he comp...