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Education Reading Vietnam War

A Dien Bien Phu retrospective

The valley of Dien Bien Phu was the site of a historic siege by the Viet Minh on the French garrison from March 13th to May 7th 1953. The siege revealed the first time an Asian force defeated a standing Western army in sustained battle. The French hoped to draw out their Viet Minh enemy and defeat them with superior artillery fire as they did at Na San in November 1952. However, a series of French military blunders would doom the garrison.

To more fully understand the French defeat may I recommend any of the titles below. All serve key lessons to the deeper American involvement in Vietnam. This would lead to our own nightmare that lasted a full generation. Each author addresses key failure points long after the battle. They each  invalidate those immediate reactions. Each author conveys the inhumanity suffered by both sides before, during and after the French surrender.

All provide powerful experiences from both the Vietnamese and French perspectives. This garrison was not an all-French unit. Quite the opposite. A majority of soldiers were African, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian and of course Vietnamese serving the French Far East Expeditionary Corps. This unit included European volunteers from Spain, Poland and Germany. The garrison’s officer corps were French. Paris was no longer sending their sons to die in the jungles of Vietnam. French troops moved a brothel into the garrison. Actually two…..yes in 1953.

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Latest Read: Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology

Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin’s Blockchain Technology by Siraj Raval is my follow up to three previous blockchain books. This kinda forks hard left after chapter two and drifts.
Decentralized Applications Harnessing Bitcoin's Blockchain TechnologyMy first book Don Tapscott’s The Blockchain Revolution was interesting in broad strokes. William Mougayar’s The Business Blockchain was better.

Melanie Swan wrote an even better overview to in her book Blockchain: A blueprint for a new economy. Melanie provides a great overview (looking back from 2015) to address decentralized apps (Dapps), decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs), decentralized autonomous corporations (DACs) and decentralized autonomous societies (DASs). There is such a deeper dive required to wrap your arms around decentralized autonomous blockchains.