HO CHI MINH ON REVOLUTION

These selected writings by the leader of a country with which the United States is now engaged in a bitter if undeclared war, defy any simple categorizing. They range in time from 1920, when Ho was an unknown photographer's assistant in Paris, to 1966. They range in style from inspired ""big lie"" propaganda to delicate poetry, and in subject matter from the Ku Klux Klan to Leninism, to Wendell Wilkie, to Dienbienphu, to a game of chess. Whatever underlying unity they have is not so much doctrinaire Communism as anticolonialist nationalism. Despite the fact that much of this material was written under the harried conditions of imprisonment or revolutionary activity, and despite the phrases that come across (in English, at any rate) as well-worn cliches, the style throughout is vivid, and the insights are those of an exceptional man. His idealism is convincing, and whatever one's opinion of the ideology through which it has found expression, his dedication is unquestionable. Bernard B. Fall, who edited and introduced this volume, has done an expectedly impressive job.