Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald

From the Publisher

This landmark work, based on Frances FitzGerald's own research and travels in Southeast Asia in the era of the Vietnam War, takes us inside Vietnam -- into the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages and the corrupt, crowded cities, into the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals and monks -- and reveals the country as if through Vietnamese eyes. With a clarity and authority unrivaled by any book before it or since, Fire in the Lake shows how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam.

Library Journal

Fitzgerald's Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning study of the Vietnam War remains essential reading 30 years after its initial publication. Fitzgerald's analysis differs from combat histories in that it presents the Vietnamese and Americans from a sociological point of view. This edition contains a new afterword in which Fitzgerald updates the story three decades after the American withdrawal. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Charles McGrath

This is the richest kind of contemporary history; it places political and military events in cultural perspective....She is superb at clarifying the differences between Vietnamese and American cultures....This is the best book on Vietnam so far. -- The New York Times Books of the Century

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents