What do you think?
Rate this book
Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War
Widely acclaimed as the Vietnam War's most highly decorated soldier, Joe Ronnie Hooper in many ways serves as a symbol for that conflict. His troubled, tempestuous life paralleled the upheavals in American society during the 1960s and 1970s, and his desperate quest to prove his manhood was uncomfortably akin to the macho image projected by three successive presidents in their "tough" policy in Southeast Asia. Looking for a Hero extracts the real Joe Hooper from the welter of lies and myths that swirl around his story; in doing so, the book uncovers not only the complicated truth about an American hero but also the story of how Hooper's war was lost in Vietnam, not at home. Extensive interviews with friends, fellow soldiers, and family members reveal Hooper as a complex, gifted, and disturbed man. They also expose the flaws in his most famous and treasured earning the Medal of Honor. In the distortions, half-truths, and outright lies that mar Hooper's medal of honor file, authors Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow find a painful reflection of the army's inability to be honest with itself and the American public, with all the dire consequences that this dishonesty ultimately entailed. In the inextricably linked stories of Hooper and the Vietnam War, the nature of that deceit, and of America's defeat, becomes clear.
- GenresBiography
618 pages, Hardcover
First published January 9, 2004
15 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Peter Maslowski
16 books2 followersPeter Maslowski is professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 8, 2022
There is actually little about Joe Ronnie Hooper in this book. Although he thrived in danger, hardship, chance, and uncertainty and proved himself to be a skilled small-unit warrior, Hooper was a womanizer, heavy drinker, and unreliable soldier when not in the field. He was a man of limited intelligence and education who did not rise above a low-level perspective on the Vietnam conflict. This is why one cannot say much about him, and Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow had to fill the bulk of their book with discussions of other topics related to the Vietnam conflict and the Cold War. They have done this mostly well.
For instance, I was impressed by the fact that the authors manage to find the most accurate term for the domestic policies of the American government and the frenzy that engulfed America during the Cold War decades: militant hyperpatriotism. Driven by obsessive, highly inflated fears, the public supported efforts to quash alleged internal Communist subversion, even if the methods were unpleasant and often illegal, and even if no threat to domestic safety existed. In an ugly, repressive atmosphere, the FBI, CIA, various congressional committees, and a host of other official agencies went on a witch-hunt against alleged subversives. Interestingly, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover became so obsessed with hunting presumed Communists that he ignored real criminals, such as members of organized crime, which he denied even existed. In the prevailing mood of militant hyperpatriotism, secrecy became synonymous with security, civil liberties and constitutional safeguards eroded, legitimate dissent was suppressed, and innocent lives were ruined.
Notably, Maslowski and Winslow dissent from the widespread conviction that President Diem's alleged ineptitude was responsible for the flagging war effort of the Kennedy administration in Vietnam. They argue, persuasively, that the American government aggravated the situation in South Vietnam with their disastrous Strategic Hamlet Program, which forcibly removed villagers from their ancestral homes and confined them on barren land behind barbed wire, where they experienced worse, not improved, living conditions. The authors also acknowledge the fruitlessness of Diem's overthrow, which not only did not generate more public support for the new Saigon government, but also alienated a large segment of supporters – the Vietnamese Catholics.
An interesting observation the authors make is that during the Vietnam era domestic and foreign politics were more interconnected than ever. The Democrats lived under the shadow of Truman’s “loss” of China, Kennedy and Johnson feared being soft on Communism. If they failed to escalate and the Communists gained control of South Vietnam, they might not be elected again. Johnson insisted that “he was not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China did" because “God Almighty, what they [the Republicans] said about us leaving China would just be warming up, compared to what they’d say now.” This is why he refused to withdraw from Vietnam even if he truly believed that America could not fight successfully ten thousand miles from home and that Vietnam was not worth fighting for.
One shortcoming of Maslowski and Winslow's analysis is that at times they oversimplify complex questions. For instance, they attribute the success of the Communists among the population of South Vietnam to the effectiveness of Communist propaganda. Hanoi's propagandists were indeed doing a decent job by playing on the inherent distrust the Vietnamese, who had suffered under French colonial oppression for almost a century, harbored for the Americans. However, to claim that the propaganda campaign was what secured Hanoi cadres in South Vietnam is to forget the massive terror campaign that the Communists launched in the South Vietnamese countryside. According to interviewed National Liberation Front cadres, the Vietnamese people were rarely won over by propaganda only. This is why the terror campaign was deliberate and organized. It was aimed at isolating villages, disrupting their social structure, and intimidating the peasants into joining the Viet Cong cause. It was not until they were thoroughly integrated in the Communist zone of influence that some people began to understand and relate to the Communist ideology.
Another thing that caught my attention is the authors' excessive generosity toward the Communists' abilities as strategists and tacticians. For instance, they greatly underemphasize the miscalculations of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive of 1968. They portray the Communist strategists as masterminds that succeeded in preparing and launching a large-scale offensive, and at the same time catch the Americans and the ARVN completely off-guard. In reality, the performance of the Communists was not as brilliant as Maslowski and Winslow want us to believe it was.
First, American intelligence services gathered enough information to expose the Communist plan months before the Lunar New Year. It was the fact that the MACV commanders and Washington military officials chose to deny the existence of such plan – because otherwise they would have contradicted the official line of the American government that the enemy was already exhausted and on the verge of giving up – that allowed the Communists to achieve surprise.
Second, there was a complete lack of coordination between Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, which was going to be the main force in the Tet Offensive. What Hanoi's strategists had envisioned and what happened on the Lunar New Year and afterwards were two completely different things. Hanoi wanted a General Offensive, a string of attacks that would spread through all South Vietnamese provinces like wildfire and would be promptly followed by a General Uprising of the South Vietnamese people. Interestingly, this plan reminded me of the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876, a similar plan to free the Bulgarian population from Ottoman yoke. In both Vietnam and Bulgaria, the plan failed. In Bulgaria, some provinces revolted too early, others too late, and yet others not at all. In Vietnam, the National Liberation Front, having not coordinated well with Hanoi, concentrated on the big cities instead of capturing the countryside where their support base was much stronger. The bloody, senseless battles for Saigon and Hue wasted their energy and gave the Americans' enough time to mobilize.
This is why I am skeptical about the praise that Maslowski and Winslow direct at the Communists. The Tet Offensive was a military disaster for them. The reason for its political success was the fact that the American policy-makers lied to the American public. Had the American government been honest about the progress of the war effort, the Communists would not have astonished the American home front with their strategic and tactical abilities, which actually were not that impressive. Interestingly, the April Uprising was also a political victory for the Bulgarians despite being a military failure, and the Ottoman Turkish government had only itself to blame for this. The excessively cruel way in which they quelled the uprising provoked international outrage, prompting Russia to fight for Bulgaria's freedom in the Russo-Turkish conflict two years later.
I was also a little surprised by the authors' favorable opinion of Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, who in reality was not only a horrible person, but also an dishonest advisor who constantly exaggerated, or outright fabricated, stories about the ARVN soldiers' ineptitude and then fed them to gullible young American reporters such as Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam.
LOOKING FOR A HERO is a well-written summary of the history of the American involvement in Vietnam. Maslowski and Winslow are occasionally prone to fallacies of reasoning, the biggest of which is their analysis of the Communists' performance during the Tet Offensive, but otherwise their work is among the better general histories of the Second Indochina War as seen from the American perspective. This book is also a good biography of Joe Ronnie Hooper, so readers interested in his life would find information – not much, but probably more than is available elsewhere.
For instance, I was impressed by the fact that the authors manage to find the most accurate term for the domestic policies of the American government and the frenzy that engulfed America during the Cold War decades: militant hyperpatriotism. Driven by obsessive, highly inflated fears, the public supported efforts to quash alleged internal Communist subversion, even if the methods were unpleasant and often illegal, and even if no threat to domestic safety existed. In an ugly, repressive atmosphere, the FBI, CIA, various congressional committees, and a host of other official agencies went on a witch-hunt against alleged subversives. Interestingly, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover became so obsessed with hunting presumed Communists that he ignored real criminals, such as members of organized crime, which he denied even existed. In the prevailing mood of militant hyperpatriotism, secrecy became synonymous with security, civil liberties and constitutional safeguards eroded, legitimate dissent was suppressed, and innocent lives were ruined.
Notably, Maslowski and Winslow dissent from the widespread conviction that President Diem's alleged ineptitude was responsible for the flagging war effort of the Kennedy administration in Vietnam. They argue, persuasively, that the American government aggravated the situation in South Vietnam with their disastrous Strategic Hamlet Program, which forcibly removed villagers from their ancestral homes and confined them on barren land behind barbed wire, where they experienced worse, not improved, living conditions. The authors also acknowledge the fruitlessness of Diem's overthrow, which not only did not generate more public support for the new Saigon government, but also alienated a large segment of supporters – the Vietnamese Catholics.
An interesting observation the authors make is that during the Vietnam era domestic and foreign politics were more interconnected than ever. The Democrats lived under the shadow of Truman’s “loss” of China, Kennedy and Johnson feared being soft on Communism. If they failed to escalate and the Communists gained control of South Vietnam, they might not be elected again. Johnson insisted that “he was not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China did" because “God Almighty, what they [the Republicans] said about us leaving China would just be warming up, compared to what they’d say now.” This is why he refused to withdraw from Vietnam even if he truly believed that America could not fight successfully ten thousand miles from home and that Vietnam was not worth fighting for.
One shortcoming of Maslowski and Winslow's analysis is that at times they oversimplify complex questions. For instance, they attribute the success of the Communists among the population of South Vietnam to the effectiveness of Communist propaganda. Hanoi's propagandists were indeed doing a decent job by playing on the inherent distrust the Vietnamese, who had suffered under French colonial oppression for almost a century, harbored for the Americans. However, to claim that the propaganda campaign was what secured Hanoi cadres in South Vietnam is to forget the massive terror campaign that the Communists launched in the South Vietnamese countryside. According to interviewed National Liberation Front cadres, the Vietnamese people were rarely won over by propaganda only. This is why the terror campaign was deliberate and organized. It was aimed at isolating villages, disrupting their social structure, and intimidating the peasants into joining the Viet Cong cause. It was not until they were thoroughly integrated in the Communist zone of influence that some people began to understand and relate to the Communist ideology.
Another thing that caught my attention is the authors' excessive generosity toward the Communists' abilities as strategists and tacticians. For instance, they greatly underemphasize the miscalculations of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive of 1968. They portray the Communist strategists as masterminds that succeeded in preparing and launching a large-scale offensive, and at the same time catch the Americans and the ARVN completely off-guard. In reality, the performance of the Communists was not as brilliant as Maslowski and Winslow want us to believe it was.
First, American intelligence services gathered enough information to expose the Communist plan months before the Lunar New Year. It was the fact that the MACV commanders and Washington military officials chose to deny the existence of such plan – because otherwise they would have contradicted the official line of the American government that the enemy was already exhausted and on the verge of giving up – that allowed the Communists to achieve surprise.
Second, there was a complete lack of coordination between Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, which was going to be the main force in the Tet Offensive. What Hanoi's strategists had envisioned and what happened on the Lunar New Year and afterwards were two completely different things. Hanoi wanted a General Offensive, a string of attacks that would spread through all South Vietnamese provinces like wildfire and would be promptly followed by a General Uprising of the South Vietnamese people. Interestingly, this plan reminded me of the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876, a similar plan to free the Bulgarian population from Ottoman yoke. In both Vietnam and Bulgaria, the plan failed. In Bulgaria, some provinces revolted too early, others too late, and yet others not at all. In Vietnam, the National Liberation Front, having not coordinated well with Hanoi, concentrated on the big cities instead of capturing the countryside where their support base was much stronger. The bloody, senseless battles for Saigon and Hue wasted their energy and gave the Americans' enough time to mobilize.
This is why I am skeptical about the praise that Maslowski and Winslow direct at the Communists. The Tet Offensive was a military disaster for them. The reason for its political success was the fact that the American policy-makers lied to the American public. Had the American government been honest about the progress of the war effort, the Communists would not have astonished the American home front with their strategic and tactical abilities, which actually were not that impressive. Interestingly, the April Uprising was also a political victory for the Bulgarians despite being a military failure, and the Ottoman Turkish government had only itself to blame for this. The excessively cruel way in which they quelled the uprising provoked international outrage, prompting Russia to fight for Bulgaria's freedom in the Russo-Turkish conflict two years later.
I was also a little surprised by the authors' favorable opinion of Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, who in reality was not only a horrible person, but also an dishonest advisor who constantly exaggerated, or outright fabricated, stories about the ARVN soldiers' ineptitude and then fed them to gullible young American reporters such as Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam.
LOOKING FOR A HERO is a well-written summary of the history of the American involvement in Vietnam. Maslowski and Winslow are occasionally prone to fallacies of reasoning, the biggest of which is their analysis of the Communists' performance during the Tet Offensive, but otherwise their work is among the better general histories of the Second Indochina War as seen from the American perspective. This book is also a good biography of Joe Ronnie Hooper, so readers interested in his life would find information – not much, but probably more than is available elsewhere.
July 17, 2015
Don't waste your time on this one. The books is about Vietnam and Joe Hooper. But, the authors spend more time writing about Vietnam and the conflict than they do on the biographical part of the book. Some of the issues:
The authors claim Department of Defense production Victory at Sea produced with significant input by members of the Greatest Generation about their efforts and victory in WWII was "chauvinistic" and foolish. I personally don't think they were excessively patriotic about their WWII victory but clearly the authors of this book feel comfortable holding them in contempt.
The authors claim that accusations in the 1950s that communists had infiltrated the American state department were made without proof. This is simply false. Which has been verified after the collapse of Russia with additional data being released verifying that Russia had people working in the American State department passing them information and influencing American actions in relation to Russia. In 2004 when this book was published this info was available. Check out the book: Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason for more if you are interested in this subject.
The authors indicate that the reason American church membership soared during the 1950s was a response to fear that people might think non-members were communists even stating that Billy Graham's religious crusades and their success were really merely a response to communism. I noted in a personal note written in the book that perhaps the book Unbroken should be reviewed as that veteran (Louis Zamperini) converted to Christianity because of a Graham crusade and his reasons had to do with trying to cure his PTSD and alcoholism. Subjects that Joe Hooper struggled with too. While anti-communism may have had some impact on church membership the simplistic and unsupported brief argument that it was the reason, is nonsense. Any broad social truth or movement is impacted by a wide range of social pressures and decisions.
The authors also claimed that kids in the little town Hooper grew up in went the the movies frequently because they were bored and kids in little towns have nothing else to do. My grandparents grew up in a little towns in the 30s and 40s. They loved going to the theater but never said it was because they didn't have anything to do and they were bored. In fact, their stories reveal a very different picture.
The authors have a very negative view of past American culture. No doubt America has issues and negative things in our past. But I can't agree with the way the authors in this book are trying to highlight things. I've read they did not serve in Vietnam. I get the feeling if they were of age to do so they were probably protesting and likely to be one of those people calling my grandpa/uncle baby killers when they came back from Vietnam. Shame a guy like Hooper didn't rate better men to write his story.
Some reviewers (on another site) accuse the authors of being Anti-American. I'm not sure that's true but, they consistently praise the communist wisdom and leadership in Vietnam and bash American culture, leaders, and choices. Now, there is plenty of true negative things to say about American leadership but the overwhelming negativity about everything American and positive views of everything communist Vietnamese is not a balanced perspective.
The authors claim Department of Defense production Victory at Sea produced with significant input by members of the Greatest Generation about their efforts and victory in WWII was "chauvinistic" and foolish. I personally don't think they were excessively patriotic about their WWII victory but clearly the authors of this book feel comfortable holding them in contempt.
The authors claim that accusations in the 1950s that communists had infiltrated the American state department were made without proof. This is simply false. Which has been verified after the collapse of Russia with additional data being released verifying that Russia had people working in the American State department passing them information and influencing American actions in relation to Russia. In 2004 when this book was published this info was available. Check out the book: Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason for more if you are interested in this subject.
The authors indicate that the reason American church membership soared during the 1950s was a response to fear that people might think non-members were communists even stating that Billy Graham's religious crusades and their success were really merely a response to communism. I noted in a personal note written in the book that perhaps the book Unbroken should be reviewed as that veteran (Louis Zamperini) converted to Christianity because of a Graham crusade and his reasons had to do with trying to cure his PTSD and alcoholism. Subjects that Joe Hooper struggled with too. While anti-communism may have had some impact on church membership the simplistic and unsupported brief argument that it was the reason, is nonsense. Any broad social truth or movement is impacted by a wide range of social pressures and decisions.
The authors also claimed that kids in the little town Hooper grew up in went the the movies frequently because they were bored and kids in little towns have nothing else to do. My grandparents grew up in a little towns in the 30s and 40s. They loved going to the theater but never said it was because they didn't have anything to do and they were bored. In fact, their stories reveal a very different picture.
The authors have a very negative view of past American culture. No doubt America has issues and negative things in our past. But I can't agree with the way the authors in this book are trying to highlight things. I've read they did not serve in Vietnam. I get the feeling if they were of age to do so they were probably protesting and likely to be one of those people calling my grandpa/uncle baby killers when they came back from Vietnam. Shame a guy like Hooper didn't rate better men to write his story.
Some reviewers (on another site) accuse the authors of being Anti-American. I'm not sure that's true but, they consistently praise the communist wisdom and leadership in Vietnam and bash American culture, leaders, and choices. Now, there is plenty of true negative things to say about American leadership but the overwhelming negativity about everything American and positive views of everything communist Vietnamese is not a balanced perspective.
June 17, 2022
I would have given this book a higher rating, because it is extremely well researched and written, but the subject matter is so disagreeable (being Joe Ronnie Hooper.) There is also a lot of filler about the Vietnam era and the war. If you've ever wanted to know more about the unspoken war, then these sections are for you. I also passed the book along to someone who lived in Saigon during this era as a civilian, and I found the name of someone I knew very well (also deceased) toward the end of the book--another Medal of Honor recipient, but in his case, it was very clear what he did, and there were plenty of witnesses grateful that he saved their lives. Hooper comes across as a sociopathic killer, addicted to war and perhaps in a rare moment of self-awareness, realizing he really had nothing else to offer society. He was a mean drunk, abusive to women, a pathological liar, and his gross lack of education and misspellings were squirmy to read. One of those "lived on his past glories" kind of guys--and as the authors make clear, there is even debate whether or not he deserved the highest military honor. I have (still) a childhood friend who fought in Vietnam, a helicopter scout, shot down over 25 times, suffering grievous injuries that are really giving him hell in 2022. He won many medals, but not the Medal of Honor, and realizing this creep did receive this award, he should be ashamed of himself, instead of coasting along post-war seeking the celebrity, the comps of free hotel rooms, drinks, dinners, etc. all the while bemoaning that he didn't receive what he felt was just honor like his hero, Audie Murphy. Did I mention his multiple wives, some of them not legal since he was also a bigamist? I want to dig him up in Arlington and put him on the curb. He doesn't deserve to be there.
June 29, 2025
In my opinion, this book is a disservice to Joe Hooper. It has way too much information that goes deep into the history of the war, the political wrangling over several presidents and so much more superfluous facts that have nothing to do with the story of Joe Hooper. A disappointing read. I ended up skimming over much of that to pick out the pieces related to the story of Joe hooper.
October 22, 2011
I spent about ten hours reading and skimming this very long biographical novel about the most highly decorated veteran of The Vietnam War. Joe Hooper should be as famous as Sargent York or Audie Murphy, but for some reason, he's the most famous American that nobody has ever heard of. This epic work is broad in scope, and provides an excellent history of the reasons and motivations for this highly contested Southeast Asian conflict. Many reviewers have said that this book is, "anti-military", but in light of the facts, I don't know how you could share this opinion. At the end of the book, I wondered if 'flawed' wars produce 'flawed' heroes, but as the book says...*War Is Hell, but Actual Combat Is A Motherfucker". And, the men who engage in this 'Hell' clearly need more than a medal and a parade when they exit the war zone, and, more than likely, require serious help to reintegrate into society, and Mr. Hooper clearly did not get this much needed attention. Drink, drugs, homelessness, and violence seem to be the fate of many of our heroes, and that is an unfortunate fact for all patriotic Americans to consider.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews