The Vietnamese war : revolution and social change in the Mekong Delta, 1930-1975

A single Vietnamese province in the Mekong Delta, My Tho, is the focus of this history of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement in the south. Elliott (Pomona College) has based the work largely on interviews conducted with prisoners and defectors conducted by the Rand Corporation and the U.S. Department of Defense during 1965-74. He argues that land reform helped mobilize the peasantry to fight for the revolutionary cause, but that, along with the war, it set off a series of unintended consequences, not least of which was the creation of a large middle class that proved resistant to agricultural collectivization, ultimately provoking a crisis for the success of the revolution itself. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). "An East gate book." 2 volumes (xxii, 1547 pages) : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm