Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald


finished in May some time but forgot ...... 1960s journalism....... rating 8

This is an old book now. Not the newest information and so on. But it's still worth reading. There was an enormous amount of material I didn't know about.

There were times when I thought Fitzgerald got overly involved in specific strategy issues and the ending made it apparent that the book was published about 5 years early - it would have been better had she waited, her predictions were kind of funny and I sort of skimmed them because what I really wanted to do was to find out the reality. She took care of that with the "Afterward."

I read that there has been some criticism of the book for not including enough about the impact of the peace movement in the US and there was also some criticism here about her not including Trinh Minh The (us). Well, imo, there is a lot missing but it's because of the enormous amount of material available and what we know. The missing information seems to be on a par with Trinh and the peace movement and maybe Barry Goldwater. I don't think there's anything of substance missing. Whenever anyone writes a story as broad as this book is there are going to be missing pieces and very difficult editing.

Overall, I didn't find the book too liberal or conservative. I've heard a lot worse. The ending was pretty harsh on the US but most of the book accused us of being naive and caught between our desire to stay out of a land war in Southeast Asia and the perceived necessity of fighting Communism. The South Vietnamese came off looking very bad, too, with many of the leaders using the US to further their own political and economic aims.

I guess I knew a lot more than I thought I did but because this was mostly a social portrait, I also learned an incredible amount. For instance, I had no idea the Buddhists were a political party and I was unaware of the amount of political infighting among the factions of the "anti-Communists." The pre-US involvement was, for the most part, new to me - actually, everything before about 1962 or so was new.


Posted: Sun - June 10, 2007 at 02:51 PM        

©