Reviews for Ancient Roman Solutions to Modern Legal Issues, the Example of Patent Law

The average rating for Ancient Roman Solutions to Modern Legal Issues, the Example of Patent Law based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-20 00:00:00 Eleazar Legaspi The bookshelves lining every wall of my office attest to the many different historical topics that have interested me over the years. There are books on the Romans, the Zulus, and the Irish. A history of Israel leans against a biography of Woodrow Wilson. An entire shelf is sagging beneath my recent fascination with World War I. There are more books about Nazis than I’m proud to admit. Curiously lacking from what I humbly perceive to be a wide-ranging selection of topics, are books about the Vietnam War. To be sure, I have three books about Dien Bien Phu, the famous final battle of the First Indochina War. But I only owned one volume concerning America’s involvement, and that book had sat unread on my shelf for over twenty years and ten different residences. The reason: in my opinion, there’s been too little time for the dust to settle. Good history does not come out of passionate emotion. There needs to be a fair passage of years before we can start to look objectively at an event. America’s Vietnam War is still too firmly imbedded in living memory and experience. It is also far too politicized – if you ask a person on the street to give their thoughts on Vietnam in one sentence, I’m fairly certain you can determine their political outlook based on that response. So that’s the reason I had not read that book on my shelf, Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, from 1983 (a book published in conjunction with a PBS miniseries). The reason I read it is much simpler. It really bothered me that I had had left a book unread on my shelf for over two decades. Karnow’s Vietnam: A History bills itself as a complete account of Vietnam at war. And it is certainly comprehensive. It begins in 1787, with Monsignor Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau de Behaine (ironically, we share the same name) returning to France to sell his King on the idea of a Christian empire in Asia. It ends almost seven hundred pages and almost two hundred years later, with America’s exit from Vietnam (“Peace with Honor”) and the subsequent fall of American-backed South Vietnam. The story in between is a sad one, a tale of colonizers and the colonized, of insurgencies, terrorism, torture, and eventually wide-scale modern war. If Karnow establishes any kind of tone, it is one of mournfulness. (His first chapter is titled “The War Nobody One.” His last chapter is called “The Peace that Never Was”). The thing that most stood out to me while reading Vietnam: A History was its readability. Vietnam is a thorny, complex, fraught subject. Karnow has created an accessible primer. The book is designed for readers, such as myself, who are new to the subject. Each chapter begins with a photo montage that previews events to follow. At the end of the book, Karnow includes a detailed chronology and a dramatis personae. These little touches do wonders in making a new (for me) and difficult subject easier to understand. Vietnam: A History also has the advantage of being written by a respected journalist and historian. Karnow was educated at Harvard and the Sorbonne. He covered Asia for fifteen years, working for a variety of media outlets. During that period, he saw the entirety of the Second Indochina War, pitting America against North Vietnam. His book is deeply sourced, and includes his own experiences on the ground, as well as numerous interviews that he did, both contemporaneously and after the fact. (He was able to visit a newly reunified Vietnam and speak with many of the Vietnamese principals, which was no small thing back then, the war being over only a handful of years). The first third of the book – covering the early French colonial experience, the Japanese and Vichy French co-occupation during World War II, and the First Indochina War, which saw the withdrawal of France from Vietnam – is informative but relatively dry. There are certainly better and more energetic books about the First Indochina War (I’m thinking, here, of Bernard Fall). Things become better paced and more engaging with the fall of Ngo Dinh Diem (assassinated following a coup) and the increased participation of the American military. Some of the uptick in quality arises from Karnow’s ability to draw on his personal experiences. (Obviously, Karnow was not reporting from Vietnam during the time of Monsignor Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau de Behaine). Due to the vast subject-matter involved, Karnow takes a necessarily macro point of view. Certainly, this is not a military history. For the most part, battles are not even mentioned (though the chronology fills in a lot of gaps). Karnow’s narrative is heavily tilted toward the political machinations, with the military and experiential aspects of the war mostly on the sidelines. As I mentioned above, the Vietnam War remains a polarizing issue. Karnow’s book hovers above the fray. He is equable in his handling of the major figures – Ho Chi Minh, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon – and never really advances a unified argument or attempts to place blame. Mostly, his book reads as cosmic tragedy rather than the result of any particular mendacity. Stanley Karnow did end up on Nixon’s enemies list, but I’ve come to the conclusion that that really wasn’t a singular achievement, and probably happened to anyone who dared report the actual conditions in Vietnam. Ultimately, I found this to be a very good intro book. Intellectually, it gave me a great framework from which to start a wider study of the Vietnam War. I was less impressed by its literary merits. When I first cracked the cover, I had an outside hope that this might rise to the level of James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom (a seminal one-volume work on the American Civil War). Unfortunately, it does reach – or even strive – for those heights. Karnow’s achievement with Vietnam: A History is clarity. For a topic like this, that is a worthwhile accomplishment.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-04-21 00:00:00 Marco Hartog This book is probably the essential one for any person interested in learning the history of the Vietnam War. It's a reread for me. I also recommend the PBS series that goes along with it. The saddest part is all of the missed opportunities, many that I had forgotten about. General Giap had been embittered by the death of his young wife in a French jail along with her infant child. Her sister was guillotined in Saigon for terrorism during the war with the French. The Cao Dai cult was founded in 1919 by Ngo Van Chieu, a mystic who claimed to commune with a spirit he called Cao Dai. It appealed to the Vietnamese taste for the supernatural. It held that the best creed ought to combine the best religious and secular beliefs: Jesus, Buddha, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, Sun Yat-sen, among others. Its main temple was in Tayninh, north of Saigon. It had many followers. Ho Chi Minh once said, "You fools! Don't you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? . . . The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to eat French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life." On the morning of June 11, 1963, a 66 year old Buddhist monk named Quang Duc set himself on fire. He climbed out of one car in a motorcade. One monk doused him with gasoline, another lit him. Malcolm Browne, an AP photographer, was there. His photo made an immense impact in the world. In a final document, he urged President Diem in a "respectful" plea to show "charity and compassion" to all. One student said monks often burned a finger or a toe as a symbolic protest. Two other monks had volunteered but his seniority prevailed. Americans tried to get Diem to change after the immolation but to no avail. Madame Nhu called it a "barbecue" and said, "Let them burn, and we shall clap our hands." The whole chapter on the assassination of Diem is fascinating. And hugely regrettable. Miscommunication everywhere. Karnow claims one disservice done by the Pentagon Papers of 1971 was to convey the idea that all plans drafted by bureaucrats was official policy. There are always incredible proposals drawn up that are not even considered. Tran Do dispelled the myth that many Westerners believed in that the Vietcong was an indigenous and autonomous insurgent movement. America was much to blame for the idea that there was some sort of headquarters for the movement. Tri Quang was a leader of Buddhists protests. It is interesting to note that when the Communists took over in 1975, they banished him to a monastery to not have to deal with him themselves. They can get such things done without much of a peep from the rest of the world. Funny story about a Texas clergyman who mistakenly kept referring to the South as "South Vietcong." The Communist fighting forces had minimal needs. I can attest to the fact that it was not the same for American soldiers, much to my chagrin. The cost of providing beer, cigarettes, and other luxuries must have been enormous. The bombing of the North appears to have heightened rather than dampened the spirit of the people of North Vietnam. Karnow speaks of a hint of "nostalgia for the war." Dealing with the reality of Communist life now without war is not as much fun. The "John Wayne Syndrome" affected a lot of young Americans who enlisted. War goes from horrible boredom to intense excitement. Guard duty in particular can be very boring, which leads to mistakes being made. There was almost a beauty to war. But there was nothing romantic about mines, booby traps, and mortars. Especially with no achievable goal in sight. When the Vietcong captured Hue in the 1968 Tet offensive, they went on a merciless house to house search. About 3,000 bodies were found later: shot, clubbed to death, or buried alive. Yet these atrocities were barely noticed by the American public compared to atrocities by American soldiers. Karnow found it difficult to find any Communist who would clarify what happened in Hue. Some even denied it. Among the dead at Hue were a group of German doctors and their families who were teaching at a local medical school. About 150 Marines were killed in the battle to retake Hue. I have a relative who was involved in that effort, and he refuses to speak about it. The Communists made a strategic mistake and did not retreat and were killed. There are those who wonder if the North Vietnamese leaders were using their members in the Vietcong as sacrificial lambs. The city had to be "destroyed in order to be saved." Karnow found that the CIA's Phoenix program had decimated the Vietcong. It was criticized at home here as a waste of time. Many of the South Vietnamese Communists found they were treated poorly by the Northerners. I found that there was a lot of prejudice between the North and South even without the war. Why did the Communists submit to the losses at Khesanh? Some think of it as a subterfuge to distract Westmoreland from protecting cities and to aid the Tet offensive. It is interesting to note that Communist leaders think they miscalculated the Tet offensive. Their main objective was to spur uprisings in the South. It was a defeat, but it turned into a victory by the effect it had on American public opinion. It is believed that some people voted for Eugene McCarthy in 1968 thinking he was the anti-Communist fanatic Joe McCarthy who died in 1957. I wonder how often that type of thing happens. The U. S. command in Saigon estimated that 65,000 soldiers were on drugs in 1970. One official linked it to "idleness, loneliness, anxiety, and frustration." The war effort seemed useless; urban Vietnamese did not care for the behavior of American soldiers. For ten dollars you could buy a vial of pure heroin. Prepacked, prerolled marijuana cigarettes soaked in opium were available for almost nothing. More than 200 incidents of fragging were recorded in 1970. I can attest to soldiers who claimed to having done that. What I don't know is if they were only trying to shock or were telling the truth. On August 20, 1968, Soviet tanks invaded Alexander Dubcek's government in Czechoslovakia. Brezhnev said he would intervene in any Communist country where he feared change of policy. That terrified the Chinese. This was an opportunity for the US to build a relationship with China. Vietcong motto: "When the head passes through, the tail will follow easily." By 1972, only 6,000 of 70,000 American troops remaining in Vietnam were combat soldiers. That's an incredible ratio. Why would any of them be willing to die for a failing cause? Saigon had over a million soldiers, but they were rushed around the country and stretched thin. It was an impossible situation for those poor men. A "leopard spot" arrangement was finally made in the peace talks, allowing Communists to hold on to territory they claimed. It was a disastrous arrangement for the South. The damage done by Nixon's famous Christmas bombing was greatly exaggerated. American antiwar activists in Hanoi wanted the mayor to lie about casualties, but he refused to his credit. President Thieu was forced to accept the "peace" proposal. It was certain to bring about the end. Communist General Tran Van Tra wrote a fabulous book about leading forces in the south, but he was purged for disagreeing with the North. Eventually Congress cut off all funding and abandoned the South. The collapse just snowballed. In Hue women swam into the ocean trying to reach fishing boats with their babies fearing another Hue massacre as in 1968. Thousands died. Finally it would be "Big" Minh who would surrender.