War Torn
Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
For the first time, nine women who made journalism history talk candidly about their professional and deeply personal experiences as young reporters who lived, worked, and loved surrounded by war. Their stories span a decade of America’s involvement in Vietnam, from the earliest days of the conflict until the last U.S. helicopters left Saigon in 1975.
They were gutsy risk-takers who saw firsthand what most Americans knew only from their morning newspapers or the evening news. Many had very particular reasons for going to Vietnam—some had to fight and plead to go—but others ended up there by accident. What happened to them was remarkable and important by any standard. Their lives became exciting beyond anything they had ever imagined, and the experience never left them. It was dangerous—one was wounded, and one was captured by the North Vietnamese—but the challenges they faced were uniquely rewarding.
They lived at full tilt, making an impact on all the people around them, from the orphan children in the streets to their fellow journalists and photographers to the soldiers they met and lived with in the field. They experienced anguish and heartbreak—and an abundance
of friendship and love. These stories not only introduce a remarkable group of individuals but give an entirely new perspective on the most controversial conflict in our history. Vietnam changed their lives forever. Here they tell about it with all the candor, commitment, and energy that characterized their courageous reporting during the war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Often only hours before you took that first sip of ricard or your martini... you had been watching a medic give up on a kid of eighteen or nineteen and flip a cold poncho over his face. Often you could hear the artillery of a battle across the Saigon River. So Kate Webb, a former UPI correspondent, recalls her days as a reporter in Vietnam, moving back and forth between the devastation of the field and the decadent and chaotic nightlife of Saigon. Her story is part of War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam, written by former correspondents including Denby Fawcett, Jurate Kazickas and UPI's Webb and Tracy Wood. The book collects nine reporters' memoirs that recall the period of 1966 1975, when women's reportage, as Gloria Emerson notes in her introduction, was much rarer than today. Author tour.