Truong Buu Lam - A Story of Vietnam

A Story of Vietnam in Kindle form is almost one year old. The people who acquired it have been few and far between. The majority remained silent. Some lavished praises, but more numerous were those who found the book wanting in many areas. I will try to address these complaints, one by one.

For the many typographical and spelling errors, I have no excuses but si n cere apologies. This time, I shall do my best to rect i fy that situation

In response to the readers who me n tion the lack of bibliographic references, I respectfully refer them to the Preface of the first edition where I explained clearly why I omitted all refe r ences. It was, therefore, a voluntary omission. That is how I could produce a "postmodernist witches brew" that narrates 4000 years of Vietnamese hi s tory in slightly over 400 pages and still had enough time and space to narrate legends and tell stories! I would invoke the same explan a tion for the lack of archaeological evidence and for the scant attention paid to the ethnic minor i ties.

Why did I not compare the Vietnamese loss to France with what was occu r ring in Japan, Korea and Siam? Because I wanted my readers to focus on what was happening in Vietnam, not in the neighborhood. In addition, I did not want to succumb to the vogue of "comparative hist o ry" which makes national histories into an embarras s ing field of research.

As for the lack of bibliographic guidance, I must say that I have never b e lieved in spoon-feeding my students. I consider it an insult to their intelligence to pr o vide them with suggested reading lists. Would it not be far better to let them have the initiative in establishing their own list and determine, perhaps via trials and errors, the relative value of the publications they would have found by their own means? If necessary, the teacher's guidance should come at the end of this process rather than the beginning.

The low price of the Kindle edition has been blamed for the lack of professionalism in copyediting, typesetting and proofreading. I humbly apologized for my limited capabilities in preparing my manuscript for printing, but I firmly submit that the low price of the book was not, in any way, the cause of the def i ciency . As a matter of fact, I had set the price of this edition at its lowest level possible so as to make it more afford a ble than its paperback counterpart which costs, in my opinion, too much , even though I also had set its price at the lowest level a l lowed by the publisher.