Journal of a Plague Year: 12, 20 & 5

by John A. Parrish

Vietnam 1st Fontana 1979 edition paperback, vg++ In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Hardcover

First published July 30, 1979

About the author

John A. Parrish, MD, is the cofounder and CEO of the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) and the former director of the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program. He is a distinguished professor emeritus of dermatology at Harvard Medical School and has served as chief of the department of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Parrish is also a member of the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine. He is the author of Autopsy of War: A Personal History and 12, 20 & 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam.

Reviews

[Paul Gaya Ochieng Simeon Juma · Rating 1 out of 5]

The one star is for the first 20 or so pages of this book. There he talked about his recruitment process into the army to serve as a doctor. The training and the preparations were okay. When one delves deeper, one meets with the constant and repeated sexual proclivities of those serving in the group. It makes one wonder whether the doctors went to Vietnam to have sex or to treat people. Why? They should have remained in their country instead of going out and then writing a book about how vietnamese women are sexually attractive and active.

We see less about the war in Vietnam. The plague that is referred to on the title happens and is described very briefly. What was the point of this book. The author should have opted for a pornorgtaphic novel instead of pretending that it came from Vietnam. Whatever his intentions were, none of it succeeded.

Do not buy this book and if you have it am sorry for you.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing, really i was so sad to finish it. I mean the day to day and minute by minute description of the events and how the john was fighting the casualities and the emotions invested there. the Mass amount of information published that time well comparing it to a reader in 2018! it is like man how the US did not censor it?! anyway, the way the book goes is very very hooking. A constant reader of military literature I can really say that it is a must! you cannot talk of Nam without watching PLATOON and you cannot say you read about NAM war without Parrish's journal of a Plague Year :)
Ah: i will report your ass!

[Gary MacKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One man's diary of a year in Vietnam during the Vietnam war,serving as a doctor, and very thought provoking.
Having read a review that slates the book I will go back and read it again, as I did not find it to be the poor book the other review suggested.