Tiger in the Barbed Wire is a fast-paced, colorful memoir by one of the few Americans to live in Vietnam during both the French and American wars. In the 1950s, Foreign Service officer Howard R. Simpson patrolled with French paratroopers at Dien Bien Phu, reported on Hanoi's fall to the Vietminh, was a press advisor to ill-fated Premier Ngo Dinh Diem, and was nearly machine-gunned in street fighting during the bloody Revolt of the Sects. In the 1960s, at a time when coups were the order of the day, he was a press advisor to Prime Minister Nguyen Khanh. When he returned to Vietnam recently to observe the shooting of a movie about Dien Bien Phu--a film that will include some of his own experiences--he interviewed the legendary Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of the North's victory. Over the years, the author came to know many of the French, Vietnamese, and Americans who shaped Vietnam's tragic destiny. This extraordinary life is described in vivid, powerful imagery by a writer whose skills have been honed during a successful second career as a novelist. As Simpson progresses from neophyte to "old Indochina hand", the reader learns what Vietnam was like during two explosive decades--and what it is like today.