Description

Franklin Library leather edition of Francis Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam," With Maps from the First Edition, one of the PULITZER PRIZE CLASSICS series, published in 1984. Bound in brown leather, the book has paper end leaves, satin book marker, gold gilt on three edges---in near FINE condition. Francis Fitzgerald, who was born in 1940, wrote the first major book by an American on Vietnam, its history and the United States activities there. Originally published in 1972, historians ranked the book as one of the best books of the year and it was on the New York Times bestsellers list for more than 10 weeks, won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize for history and the National Book Award. FitzGerald said it was a "first draft of history." She explored thousands of years of the history and culture of Vietnam, showing how these affected the relations of its peoples with their encounter with the United States. She says that the US understood little about the country and its leaders, reacting to the threat of communism rather than recognizing the nation's long struggle to gain and keep its independence from foreign invaders. She argued that American values of freedom, democracy, optimism, and technological progress were inconsistent with Vietnam's values, culture, agrarian economy, and long history of warfare with France and China, making the Vietnam War effort doomed from the start. The Vietnamese sense of government, history, politics, and war is completely different from the American one. They have had a cultural tradition of ancestor worship and a different belief in what constitutes effective government (the Mandate of Heaven . The US government's failure to acknowledge these differences led to its failure in waging war there against the North Vietnamese and insurgents. FitzGerald wrote, "But the American officials in supporting the Saigon government insisted that they were defending 'freedom and democracy' in Asia. They left the GIs to discover that the Vietnamese did not fit into their experience of either 'communist' or 'democrats.' She continued, "Whatever strategy the American government uses to carry on the war, it will only be delaying the inevitable." The book discusses the US government's ignorance of Vietnam's history, especially their determination to rid themselves of foreign invaders. They fought against Chinese domination for 1000 years, despite the latter's vastly superior population and resources. Many of the people considered United States forces to be another wave of foreign invaders. The book covers the history in depth and reaches the Tet Offensive 90% of the way through the narrative. It explores the Cao Dai monotheist religious sect in Tay Ninh , the corrupt regime of Ngo Dinh Diem , and "Nixon's War." The book is one of the first to explore the Vietnamese shanty towns that developed around US bases. They were centers of laundry services, bars and food, and prostitution. 491 pages, including an Index. I offer combined shipping.