Earth and Water: Encounters in Viet Nam

As a child of the Vietnam era, I've long been curious to find out what became of the people that populated the Time magazine of my youth. Shillue brings up to date with a personal look at the lives and times of the Vietnamese. It is reassuring to hear about the resiliency of the Cambodian people and I was glad to see that Shillue's first-hand accounts bring us right into the lives of those we left behind. I particularly liked when she compared contemporary Americans to their counterparts in Asia.

Excellent Read! In the early 1990s I was an American businessman living in Vietnam and this well written book takes me back to the country and a time which I still miss every day. It reminds Americans that Vietnam is a place and not a war.If anyone wishes to see and feel Vietnam and Cambodia as they are today this is THE book to read. I look forward to Ms Shillue's next book.

This book is unusual, for it offers readers a sense of the sights, feelings and sounds of Vietnam in the late 1990s. Shillue is an honest reporter, who travels to Vietnam without war baggage. She writes like a dream and the only criticism I have of the book is that I wanted more. Read it.

If you want to know what life is like for ordinary people in Vietnam today, read this wonderful book. Shillue has the capacity to bring to life the sights and more interestingly the sounds of the country and its people. She lived in Vietnam as a teacher, one of the best ways to really get inside a society, and she went there without the war baggage of all too many middle aged US writers. A very good read that is also educational.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. During the Vietnam war, I was just old enough to understand the carnage shown every evening on the television, the massive protests, the terror of war and the enemy. This book opened my eyes to the beauty of the Vietnamese landscape and people. It made me wish I could visit, and now that I've read Earth and Water, maybe someday I will. This is a sensitively and beautifully written book and definitely worth reading.