Hope and Vanquished Reality

The author writes that from his personal perspective this book is about hope. But it is also about a complex of historical, tumultuous, tragic, and hopeful events that were not only played out in Vietnam, but also on the world stage in which he became a participant from the time of the 1960s. The book is organized into prologue, eleven chapters, and an epilogue that relate historical events after which the author then forms conceptions related to hope. At the end of each chapter are codas, which emerged as reflections-even meditations-on hope as the author was in the process of writing the book. At the end of the book are sections with a glossary of abbreviations, biographical data on both Vietnamese and foreign persons referred to in the book, and an annotated history of Vietnam from the time of 2879 BC to the present.