Fire in the Lake

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