Ho is the precis of much longer political biography. In 1971, Ho the man, the thinker, and revolutionary political leader had already disappeared behind decades of underground life on the run and deliberate communist myth making. Halberstam draws from the best available evidence to describe Ho Chi Minh's career. Ho was an ardent Vietnamese nationalist who, while living in Paris around World War I, found the Communist Party to be the only group speaking to the concerns of colonized people. When the chance for Vietnamese freedom came post World War 2, the Vietn Minh was the group best placed to seize it, whatever the cost.

At just over 100 pages, and based primarily on interviews with a handful of Western journalists and writings from the 1920s, this book is necessarily thin of hard details. Halberstam is an engaging writer as always, but he doesn't have the tools to grapple with the big questions: How did the Viet Minh grow and win their wars? How did Ho Chi Minh avoid the authoritarian purges and cults of personality that characterized other Communist parties? (Not to cast Ho Chi Minh as blameless. There is blood on his hands, but it's nothing compared to Stalin and Mao.)

I'm sure better books on Ho Chi Minh have been written since the 70s.