Dissident, revolutionary, communist, Ho Chi Minh returned from exile to lead North Vietnam's defiant break with colonial France. Duiker charts in convincing detail Ho Chi Minh's long march from the son of a scholar in the rural provinces to idealist student in heady 1920s Paris to rebel and determined revolutionary. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969. The book is hard going, not enlivened by much in the way of anecdote, but definitive -- and well worth the effort for travelers interested in the fundamentals of the Vietnamese drive to oust the French from Indo-China.  (VNM45, $18.95)