Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0316159190, Paperback)

This landmark work, based on Frances FitzGeralds own research and travels, takes us inside Vietnaminto 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 seen 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. For Fire in the Lake, Frances FitzGerald received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, an Overseas Press Club award for best interpretation of foreign affairs, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, a National Institute for Arts and Letters award, the Front Page Award, the Christopher Book Award, the Washington Monthly Political Book Award, the Sidney Hillman Award, and the Bancroft Prize. In the 30 years since its initial publication, Fire in the Lake has achieved the status of a classic. An essential text for students of Asian-American relations. FitzGeralds new writings on Vietnam appear, along with photographs by Mary Cross, in Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth, published by Bulfinch in November 2001.