Acknowledgments

The present volume grew out of a double panel at the 1996 annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. It could not have been put together without the assistance and inspiration of numerous individuals and institutions across several continents. In addition to the acknowledgments included in individual chapters, the authors wish to express their thanks to the two panel discussants, Marilyn Young and Rubie S. Watson, for their insightful comments on the papers. We record as well our appreciation for the very lively interventions by members of the audience. The incisive critiques of Michael Robinson and another reader for the University of California Press greatly improved the original manuscript. Duong Ngoc Dung compiled the glossary. Natalia Puchalt supplied many of the beautifully evocative photographs in the book. Sheila Levine, Juliane Brand, and Rose Anne White of the University of California Press patiently shepherded the manuscript through the many stages of the publishing process.

While we gratefully acknowledge our numerous debts, we also take full responsibility for errors of fact or interpretation. Above all, we hope that our collective effort will inspire others to delve more deeply into issues of history and memory in Vietnam. The present volume should thus be seen as a beginning, not an end.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai