Titled "My Lai: Viet Nam, 1968 - Nhin lai cuoc tham sat" in Vietnamese, the over-700-page book, translated by Manh Chuong, provides a full, comprehensive, and truthful description of one of the “darkest” events in the US’s military intervention in Vietnam.
It came as a result of an almost decade of research by Howard Jones, University Research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama.
Of the three parts, the first touches upon the causes of the pain by My Lai residents, the second analyses the massacre’s aftermath and the US administration’s cover-up, and the last is about what the US administration had to pay for the crime.
"The best book by far on the My Lai massacre and its aftermath—exhaustively researched, persuasively argued, and a page-turner to boot. A must-read for anyone interested not only in the Vietnam era, but also in how things can go terribly wrong in the midst of armed conflict, the laws of war notwithstanding. Truly exceptional!", according Ralph B. Levering, author of “The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History”.
In the morning of March 16, 1968, US troops entered four hamlets, namely My Lai 4, My Khe 4, Binh Tay, and Binh Dong of Son Tinh district, the central province of Quang Ngai, located near the demilitarised zone called "Pinkville" by the US. After three hours, more than 500 unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, were killed by US troops.
The atrocity, the My Lai massacre, took its name from one of the hamlets.
