Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina

by Bernard B. Fall, Fredrik Logevall (Foreword by)

Overview

First published in 1961 by Stackpole Books, Street without Joy is a classic of military history. Journalist and scholar Bernard Fall vividly captured the sights, sounds, and smells of the brutal— and politically complicated—conflict between the French and the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina. The French fought to the bitter end, but even with the lethal advantages of a modern military, they could not stave off the Viet Minh insurgency of hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. The final French defeat came at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and a far bloodier chapter in Vietnam‘s history. Fall combined graphic reporting with deep scholarly knowledge of Vietnam and its colonial history in a book memorable in its descriptions of jungle fighting and insightful in its arguments. After more than a half a century in print, Street without Joy remains required reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811736541
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/16/2018
Series:	Stackpole Military History Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	424
Sales rank:	177,958
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bernard Fall was born in Vienna in 1926, migrating to France in 1938. After his father was killed by the Gestapo and his mother killed at Auschwitz, he joined the French Resistance at sixteen, then the French Army. Following World War II, he was an analyst with the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Coming to the U.S. in the early 1950s, he earned a masters and a doctorate at Syracuse. He first traveled to Indochina in 1953, returning in 1957, 1962, 1965, 1966, and 1967, when he was killed by a mine on the “street without joy,” the highway he had described in his book. His other books include Hell in a Very Small Place (PB, Da Capo).

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of History. A specialist on U.S. foreign relations history and modern international history, he has previously taught at Cornell and the University of California. Logevall is the author or editor of nine books, most recently Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (Random House, 2012), which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2013 Francis Parkman Prize, as well as the 2013 American Library in Paris Book Award and the 2013 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Table of Contents

Foreword to 2018 Edition Fredrik Logevall vii

Introduction George C. Herring 3

Foreword Marshall Andrews 9

Author's Preface 15

1 How War Came 22

2 Set-Piece Battle-I 32

3 Set-Piece Battle-II 61

4 Diary: Milk Run 107

5 Laos Outpost 116

6 Diary: The Women 131

7 "Street Without Joy" 144

8 Diary: Inspection Tour 174

9 End of a Task Force 185

10 Diary: Hie Men 251

11 Death March 295

12 Why Dien Bien Phu? 312

13 The Loss of Laos 330

14 The Second Indochina War 343

15 The Future of Revolutionary War 369

Appendix I Glossary of Abbreviations 383

Appendix II Comparison Between French and U.S. Losses 385

Appendix III Report on Viet-Nam 387

Appendix IV A Military Bibliography of Indochina 398

Index 404

Editorial Reviews

A dramatic treatment of a historic event.. .. The vast panorama of the Indochina struggle emerges with graphic impact. —New York Times Book Review

A textbook for those of us going to Vietnam. –Colin Powell

The literature on the Vietnam War is enormous and growing, but Fall’s work still stands out for its insight and sagacity. He remains our greatest writer on the struggle. –Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War

A poignant, angry, articulate book. —Newsweek

No one had more experience with the [French and American wars in Vietnam] than he did, or saw them as clearly. —Frances FitzGerald, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fire in the Lake

From the Publisher