Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Keith Hockton, FRAS, is a writer, publisher, and award-winning podcaster based in Penang, Malaysia, with a deep passion for uncovering the stories that shaped our world. As the Southeast Asia Editor for International Living magazine, Keith explores the intersections of history, culture, and modern life across the region.
A dynamic lecturer and storyteller, he speaks internationally on Southeast Asian politics, economics, and history—bringing the past to life with clarity, wit, and insight. Keith is also a proud Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and is on a mission to make history not only accessible but genuinely entertaining for everyone.
His published books include:
• Atlas of Australian Dive Sites - Travellers Edition (Harper Collins Australia, 2003).
• Penang - An inside guide to its historic homes, buildings, monuments and parks (MPH Publishing, 2012; 2nd Edition 2014; 3rd Edition 2017).
• Festivals of Malaysia (Trafalgar Publishing, 2015).
• The Habitat Penang Hill: A pocket history (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Alana and the Secret Life of Trees at Night (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Penang Then & Now: A Century of Change in Pictures (Entrepot Publishing, 2019; 2nd Edition 2021
• Bersama Lima - Five Together (Entrepot Publishing, 2022)
www.entrepotpublishing.com
Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Vietnam, The War That Broke America
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We step into the shadows of Southeast Asia, where beauty and violence sit side by side, and something begins to break. Vietnam is no longer a distant conflict. It is the place where power is tested, and found wanting.
This is not a story of victory. It is the story of a slow failure, measured in years, in lives, in decisions that cannot be undone. In the jungles and the cities, confidence turns to doubt, doubt to fear, and fear to something far more dangerous. Each escalation promises control. Each one delivers the opposite.
From the quiet rooms of Washington, D.C. to the flooded rice paddies of Vietnam, we follow a nation at the height of its power as it begins, almost imperceptibly, to lose its way. Not in a single moment, but in a long, grinding descent.
This is where the illusion cracks. Where certainty gives way to confusion. Where a superpower discovers that it cannot bend the world to its will.
Settle in, because this is not just a war story. It is the beginning of something else entirely, the moment the arc turns, and the cost of pride begins to be paid in full.
For books written and published by Keith Hocton