Korea

Sandwiched between the highs of WWII and the lows of Vietnam, the Korean War seems now largely forgotten. Yet the consequences of that bloody intervention continue to spew forth like political lava from some seething, half-buried caldron. Vietnam had a popular fallout, but the issues and events of distant Korea remain largely unknown to generations who cut their teeth on the Tet Offensive and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Halliday - Cumings book represents a sturdy short bridge spanning that gap, beginning with the star-crossed events of 1945 and ending with the ill-fated Geneva Conference of 1954. In between is a story of almost unrelieved devastation and dashed hopes for the Korean people. Those looking for a detailed history of the war itself should look elsewhere, while those looking for historical perspective should definitely pick up the book. There's a scholarly detachment here that favors neither side, but one that also exposes many suppressed facts about America's involvement with a tarnished South Korean ally. Unstated yet implied by most histories, including this one, is a single overriding fact. The regime in South Korea, with its history of collaboration with hated Japan, lacked from the outset a strong popular base, and was thus militarily and politically weaker than its nationalist albeit communist rival in the North. Thus the South could only survive through outside intervention, which it got, in this case successfully. Nevertheless, parallels with the unpopular French-collaborating regime in South Vietnam could not be more obvious, nor the tragic dynamics more similar. Published in 1988 before the Soviet bloc's collapse, the latter part of the book is now somewhat dated. Still and all, I don't think anyone can understand modern American history or its global role without sober works like this one, and don't let the many bleakly revealing photographs that intersperse the text fool you. This is a book of considerable depth, more akin to the pioneering research of I.F. Stone, than to the glossy pages of a Life magazine. In many ways, as recent events have shown, the events of that time are still trailing blood and threaten to erupt again at any moment. It's best to be informed.

This work is much shorter and easier to read than the gigantic double-volume "The Origins of the Korean War" (Vols. I & II), also by Bruce Cummings. This book is a must for any school or university library. It is also an important addition to the available literature in the English language about the Korean War. Halliday and Cummings give the reader a very good overview of the DOMESTIC KOREAN situation that resulted in the war. This is the information that is so desparately needed (and so consistently absent from mosts texts on the topic) to understand the war in its totality. IF YOU ARE A VET, OR ARE INTERESTED IN THIS TOPIC, OR IN THIS ERA OF US HISTORY, OR IN THE FIELD OF FOREIGN POLICY, I CANNOT GIVE A HIGHER RECOMMENDATION. I am an amateur historian who focuses mostly on 20th C. Korean history. This book, in addition to other, more well-known books that deal with the chrononlogy and individual battles of the war, are excellent sources of information on this topic. YOU MUST OWN THIS BOOK!