HARDCOVER First Edition. ‘Surely God weeps,’ an Australian Vietnam veteran wrote in despair at the memory of the Vietnam War. But no act of God intervened to stop the long years of carnage and devastation in this most controversial of wars. In VIETNAM, Paul Ham (author of the bestselling KOKODA) narrates in compelling detail the full story of Australia’s involvement in our longest military campaign, in which 50,000 Australians participated. This extraordinary, sweeping account draws on hundreds of unpublished sources and interviews with soldiers, politicians, medical practitioners, aid providers, entertainers and the Vietnamese people to reconstruct the epic history of a campaign that disfigured a country and divided the world, nations, families and friends. At its heart, this is the soldiers’ story – of being tossed about in politicians’ battles. Unlike any previous history of the war, Paul Ham sets the Australian story in the context of both the American and Vietnamese experiences, giving us a true sense of the sheer scale of this tragedy. pp. 814 illusts #0919R/05201120