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Anthropologist Schwenkel (Univ. of California, Riverside) addresses perhaps one of the most compelling transnational events in history. For one nation, the event was crucial as a foundation from which to challenge the great meta-narratives of modern times; from the perspective of another nation, it validated a version of modernity thickly embedded in local experiences of colonialism. Whether it is the "Vietnam" War or the "American" War, Schwenkel illustrates the continuing aftereffects of these histories as living memories in the ethnographic present of Vietnam. Fieldwork takes place in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City as well as Hue and Vinh cities. This multi-sited ethnography includes experiences of mobility back and forth between Vietnam and the US that generates this transnational ethnography of knowledge production and memory-making "undergoing globalizing conditions." The final result is a compelling and rare ethnographic portrait of a historically determined out-of-the-way place revealing postmodern conditions of globalizing capital undergoing locally situated revisions--in this case, toward a "market economy with social orientation." Fascinating and a must for all readers interested in the present and the past as it is constituted in memory. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. S. Ferzacca University of Lethbridge