Uses U.S. travel narratives and tourist guidebooks as a window into U.S.-Vietnam relations and to make the case that these provide insight into historical interpretations, memory, and cultural understandings, especially of the Vietnam War.

Prefatory Note: The Nomenclature of the Vietnam War ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Abbreviations and Acronyms xvii
Introduction: History, Tourism, and the Question of Empire 1
1. Tourism and State Legitimacy in the Republic of Vietnam 15
2. Educating Private Ryan: Tourism and the United States Military in Postcolonial Vietnam 47
3. "They Set About Revenging Themselves on the Population": The "Hue Massacre" and the Shaping of Historical Consciousness 87
4. The New Modernizers: Naturalizing Capitalism in Doi Moi Vietnam 123
5. "The Other Side of the War": Memory and Meaning at the War Remnants Museum 151
Epilogue: Tourism and the Martial Fascination 183
Notes 189
References 249
Index 271

Scott Laderman is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.