Pain & Grace: A Journey through Vietnam documents a unique period in Vietnamese history. In 1987, San Jose Mercury News photographer Jim Gensheimer traveled to the South China Sea with the French rescue operation, Medicine du Monde, to photograph the plight of Vietnamese refugees who were fleeing their country by boat. Over the next 13 years, Gensheimer visited Vietnam six times.



Pain & Grace depicts Vietnam during a decade of exodus and return, rebuilding and healing. It shows the grace of the land and its people as well as the pain of suffering and hardship.

The 128-page hardcover book includes 104 color photographs by Jim Gensheimer. It also includes essays by Kristin Huckshorn, who opened the first newspaper bureau on behalf of the Mercury News, and Mark McDonald, the current Mercury News Vietnam bureau chief.




The Photographer


Jim Gensheimer is a photojournalist at the San Jose Mercury News. A 1982 graduate of Western Kentucky University and a former intern at National Geographic, Gensheimer worked at the Louisville Courier-Journal for two years before joining the staff of the San Jose Mercury News in 1984. He was named California Press Photographer of the Year in 1988 and 1992. In 1995, he was the first American newspaper photojournalist to go to North Korea since the war. Gensheimer attended Ohio University as a Knight fellow and earned a master's degree in visual communications in 1999.

He has worked on several book projects: "A Day in the Life of California," "In Pursuit of Ideas; The 125th Anniversary of the University of California," "Once Upon a Dream; The Vietnamese - American Experience," and "24 Hours in Cyberspace."

To contact Jim Gensheimer: e-mail jgensheimer@sjmercury.com

The above quote and image is from the San Jose Mercury News

see also Things Asian where you can buy the book for $29.00