I have a weird fascination with American Wars, more specifically the Vietnam War. The obsession almost six years ago, at the end of my freshman year of high school. I wrote my final paper for my American Lit class on photo journalism during the Vietnam War, focusing on the Associated Press photograph Horst Faas. When I saw that this book talked about the Vietnam War through the Blogging for Books program, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on it. Here are my thoughts on the book Legend by Eric Blehm.
Remember the last book review I did on the book Performing Under Pressure? Remember how I had said that it took me far-too-long to read that book? Well it was the complete opposite with this book. Within the first night of beginning this book, I had read 75 pages before going to bed that night (and it’s a sizable sized book).
This book tells the true story of a Green Beret named Roy Benevidez and the events that took place in Cambodia on May 2, 1968. While some nonfiction, history books can be dry due to a fact-overload, this book read like any of the best fiction novels – the story was that good. The events of that fateful day in May were not glazed over and done a disservice by any means. All of the troop and rank abbreviations were clarified and used continuously throughout the book which made me feel like I had (obviously) learned something.
Even if you’re not as interested in the Vietnam War as I am, I would highly, highly, highly recommend this book to any history buff. I learned so much about the armed forces, the Vietnam War and true sacrifice. Like Roy learned from his grandfather and how I learned from him, “if you get the chance to help someone, you help them.”