Travel and Culture
The Rough Guide to Vietnam and Lonely Planet Vietnam are the standard practical companions, updated regularly. Lonely Planet is more widely available in-country.
Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham — a Vietnamese-American journalist cycles through Vietnam retracing his family's history. One of the more honest and literary accounts of the country and its diaspora.
A Dragon Apparent by Norman Lewis (1951) — a travel classic. Lewis traveled through Indochina before the wars, and his account of the landscapes and people remains vivid and unsettling. The contrast with what came after gives it an extra dimension.
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (1955) — set in Saigon and the Mekong Delta during the French war. Fiction, but it reads as prophecy about American involvement. Essential context.
History and War
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen — Pulitzer Prize-winning novel told from the perspective of a North Vietnamese spy embedded with South Vietnamese refugees. A complex, darkly funny reckoning with the war and its aftermath.
Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald (1972) — a Pulitzer-winning account of Vietnam's history and culture in the context of the American war. Dense but essential.
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip — memoir of a Vietnamese woman who survived the war from the Vietnamese civilian side. Oliver Stone adapted it for film.
Dispatches by Michael Herr — journalism that reads like war fiction. The American war correspondent experience at its most visceral.
The Pentagon Papers and a range of memoir literature round out the historical record; the Vietnamese side of the war is less well represented in English, which is itself worth noting.