`Perfect Spy` by Larry Berman

: Book Review of `Perfect Spy` by Larry Berman The title of the book Perfect Spy ' speaks for right term to describe the life story a person from the point of an American author Professor Larry Berman is of course the American author while Pham Xuan An is the spy who was considered the Vietnam 's greatest undercover agent and multiply awarded hero of his country . Berman has all the right to call An the Perfect Spy ' because the agent benefited much from his education in the US soil but only to have used

his skills learned to fight America in a most subtle way by helping the American enemy in the Vietnam War

The book is an account of a complex man who has put life in the line to with the intension of both saving his country from foreign invasion and saving the lives of a great number people on both sides of the Vietnam War . It was therefore by this account that An could be considered as more than a secret agent , a reporter , a Communist , since he was indeed a friend to many people . An was a man who transcended nationalities and hence he may be called a true internationalist and a humanitarian by his own merits

On the face of it , perhaps it was a political ideology that separated Pham Xuan An from America but as could be gleaned from the book , his attitude of wanting to prevent invasion of Vietnam may be viewed as humanitarian since the objective is to save people from the ravages of the war . But since the war still proceeded despite his best of intentions , would still be fair to consider him a humanitarian ? What really is his real participation in the war ? These and other interesting question will find their answer as the story of An explained in the following paragraphs An , in the story is known to have joined the Communist Party in the 1940s due to his belief in the anti-imperialist ideals of the party and its goal-uniting spirit for Vietnamese people under a sovereign power (Berman , 2007 . He happened to oppose imperialism . He happened to believed in the capacity of nations to be independent and self sustaining without the other bigger or stronger countries having to mind small countries ' right for self determination and self governance

The year 1956 was an important part of his life as this was the year when An received a State Department scholarship to attend Fullerton College in California . This therefore necessitated him to travel to the US as a student . He studied journalism at a California college , and this eventually led him to have to have job in the press by covering Asia (Berman , 2007 . The ironies of life have it that a CIA agent would be the one to sponsor him (An ) for an immigration status which is valid enough to cause him to live and study in California . If one would go back in time to understand why...