What We Are Reading Today: ‘Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy’ by Max Hastings

Short Url
Updated 17 March 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy’ by Max Hastings

“Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy” offers an absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War.

Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.

No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well, according to a review on goodreads.com.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elephants and Their Fossil Relatives’

Updated 12 January 2026
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elephants and Their Fossil Relatives’

Authors: Asier Larramendi Aand Marco P. Ferretti

Today, only three species of elephants survive—the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana), the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).

However, these modern giants represent just a fraction of the vast and diverse order Proboscidea, which includes not only living elephants but also their many extinct relatives.

Over the past 60 million years, proboscideans have evolved and adapted across five continents, giving rise to an astonishing variety of forms.