Nguyen's remarkable achievement is her ability to allow the veterans to speak for themselves in this groundbreaking study from that tragic conflict. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

Choice

[An] outstanding book. . . . The South Vietnamese military-which lost a quarter of a million men killed in action and nearly one million seriously wounded-has largely been ignored, forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant. This excellent and much-needed book, however, gives voices to those unknown soldiers of the Vietnam War, and constitutes an important and necessary addition to the burgeoning scholarship of the war.

Vietnam Magazine

Nguyen's book is a welcome and important contribution to the study of the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese state and society, and the post-1975 Vietnamese diaspora. It is also a fine example of the use of personal testimony to explore the complex and ongoing interplay between history and memory.

Australian Historical Studies

Nguyen's book breaks ground with its broader societal focus, especially in its inclusion of the children of ARVN veterans, who for the most part do not reside in Vietnam…It is important not only for scholars of the war, but also for the veterans and their children and grandchildren who have long been robbed of the chance to commemorate the lives and struggles of their parents and grandparents.

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

This book does what oral history enables one to do: it adds to the historical record the experiences and perspectives of groups of people who might otherwise have been hidden from history . . . South Vietnamese Soldiers thus provides new and valuable first-hand accounts by South Vietnamese soldiers about their service during the war and their lives in its aftermath.

Oral History Review

These oral narratives of South Vietnamese veterans offer one of the first resources of the previously neglected South Vietnamese perspective. Moreover, Nguyen's work is permutated with memories of childhood in the 'country from before', focusing on much more than just the military struggle of Saigon. This impressive study would therefore be a good place to start further research on individual South Vietnamese military experiences from the First Republic (1955–63), the Interregnum (1963–7) and the Second Republic (1967–75).

Journal of Contemporary History