Description

**A “compassionate and penetrating” landmark history of Vietnam and the Vietnam War (** New York Times Book Review **).** **“Fitzgerald’s Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning study of the Vietnam War remains essential reading thirty years after its initial publication.” —** Library Journal This magisterial work, based on Frances FitzGerald’s many years of research and travels, takes us inside the history of Vietnam—the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages, the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals and monks, the disruption created by French colonialism, and America’s ill-fated intervention—and reveals the country as seen through Vietnamese eyes. Originally published in 1972, *Fire in the Lake* was the first history of Vietnam written by an American and won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award. With a clarity and insight unrivaled by any author before it or since, Frances FitzGerald illustrates how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam. **“** Fire in the Lake **is a magnificent achievement, huge, wide ranging, fascinating, stimulating. It is the first book I would recommend to anyone to read on Vietnam.” —Martin Bernal,** New York Review of Books **“Fresh and enthralling. . . . FitzGerald fills an enormous gap by explaining the Vietnamese from their own point of view and by describing the war from the perspective of Vietnamese culture.” —Kevin P. Buckley,** Newsweek **“The bravest and most intelligent effort by an American writer to comprehend the Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass relationship between the Vietnamese and the Americans.” —Laurence Stern,** Washington Post Book World