The book deals with the origins of Vietnam, especially the Dongsonian civilization with its characteristic bronze drums. The year was 39 CE when the Lac people under the Trung's leadership revolted against the Chinese yoke and threw them out of Vietnam. The Trung Sisters reigned for almost three years when they had to face a new Chinese army sent to subdue them. The Trung Sisters were the first warriors and Queens to define the identity of the unique Vietnamese culture. They instilled and sowed the concepts of freedom and independence, seeds that took a long time to blossom. They showed the...

Vietnam is a country built by wars so much that wars are in the blood of the Vietnamese. They live in wars, with wars, and by wars. It seems that no Vietnamese generation has been immune to wars for the last two millennia. Without wars, Vietnam would have been enslaved by foreigners. Without wars, it would not have been a free country. Wars, however, are destructive and people eventually lose something when they get involved in them, winners included. The Vietnamese are persistent fighters. If independence is a factor, freedom and human rights remain the main reasons for their struggles. As...

When I embarked on this project back on one cold January day of 2015 (this was one of the coldest winters I had ever witnessed with its relentless cold snaps and winter storms that froze my ideas at times), I thought I would only receive a lukewarm response from the Vietnamese-American community because I did not know the great majority of these practitioners-many of them being from the 2.0 generation. They did not know me and I did not know them either. It was basically a "cold sale" process. And I wondered how to approach these physicians, how to entice them to write essays about their...