Seeing Vietnam Encounters of the Road and Heart

As Brownmiller does the twist in a Hanoi disco, gorges on garlic-fried crab (while passing up the crunchy fried songbirds), bargains for hand-painted ceramics, joins a class in tai chi for older women, drinks tea with the Buddhist monks of Hue, sits crosslegged with the Bru Van Kieu near the ghostly remains of a military base, gives an impromptu English lesson to university students, is offered a pygmy slow loris on a Saigon street, and chats with representatives of some of the larger multinationals in her hotel lobby, the reader shares her intense engagement, her delight in each new encounter, and the emotional catharsis of seeing - and making friends with - a people and a country we have fought but never known.