Review by Choice Review
Before Vietnam, war reporting was a nearly all-male endeavor. An ambient "you don't belong here" greeted the few women who wrangled assignments in the war zone. This exquisitely written book profiles journalists Kate Webb, Catherine Leroy, and Frances Fitzgerald who crossed that Rubicon to change Americans' perception of the war. The details of their valor, discovered in archives and interviews, are engrossing. Webb was held captive in North Vietnam for 23 days, Leroy parachuted with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and Fitzgerald's reportage and elite ties influenced the course of the war. Becker, an award-winning journalist, uses the biographical form to illustrate the war behind the war being reported on. Readers meet such legendary figures as Daniel Ellsberg and Ward Just, with whom the three women associated. Having covered Cambodia for the Washington Post in 1973 and 1974, Becker also writes herself into the book. Her synopsis of Lon Nol's overthrow of Prince Sihanouk and the rise of the Khmer Rouge is a credible primer for that tangled history. More than the you-go-girl fable the book's title suggests, the protagonists' feminine moxie was juiced by class privilege: all three spoke French; Henry Kissinger wooed Fitzgerald. Social class forms a collateral narrative to the avouched feminism, giving this book added depth. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. --Jerry L Lembcke, emeritus, College of the Holy Cross
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
The Vietnam War, ancient history to some, is still being examined. Discussions of colonialism, methods of warfare, racism, cruelty, and politics only scratch the surface of the complications. Journalism as a profession and as a way to illuminate events rose to a new level of importance during those tumultuous years. Becker presents three extraordinary women journalists who risked all to tell the story, for, along with all the other issues of the era, sexism is part of that story. Australian Kate Webb, Frenchwoman Catherine Leroy, and American Frances FitzGerald, took themselves to the war front, without jobs or authorization to start with, to tell the story from their unique perspectives. At this time, women were considered too physically and emotionally fragile to face the horrors of a conflict such as this, but face it they did. Becker, a former Vietnam War correspondent herself, writes about these women's lives, but the stink and horror of the war is present on every page. Whether as a woman's story or a war story, this should find a wide audience.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Becker (Overbooked) delivers a crisp and incisive group biography of three women who battled sexism and broke new ground while reporting on the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, French photojournalist Catherine Leroy rode a bicycle into the Communist-occupied city of Hue and took the first pictures of North Vietnamese Army soldiers in South Vietnam (the photos appeared on the cover of Life magazine). Frances FitzGerald, the daughter of a CIA deputy director, circulated among the American elite in South Vietnam, Becker notes, but her reporting, which culminated in the book Fire in the Lake, centered on Vietnamese history and culture and explored how America's "ham-fisted policies" delegitimized its allies in South Vietnam. In 1971, North Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodia took Australian reporter Kate Webb prisoner and held her for more than two weeks, leading to erroneous reports of her death. Becker, who also reported from Cambodia in the 1970s, fluidly sketches the history and politics of the Vietnam War and captures her subjects in all their complexity. Readers interested in women's history and foreign affairs won't be able to put this fascinating chronicle down. Photos. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Battlefield journalism during the Vietnam War was a man's world, until the four remarkable women depicted here changed the rules. Becker (When the War Was Over) offers an absorbing narrative of French photographer Catherine Leroy, American author Francis Fitzgerald, Australian reporter Kate Webb, and Becker, herself, an American correspondent. These pioneers filed their assignments so skillfully that they become celebrities among their readers and their all-too-often sexually harassing peers. Included are gripping stories of Webb's and Becker's coverage of Cambodia's bloody killing fields, and Webb's three-week imprisonment by the North Vietnamese. The four women shared the common goal of telling the full story of U.S. policy and strategy that led to millions of deaths, destroyed once great cities, and defoliated the countryside. The three women whom Becker concentrates on were honored both during and after the war: Leroy became a national heroine, Fitzgerald wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fire In The Lake, and Webb became the first woman to head a news bureau in a war zone. VERDICT Readers interested in the Vietnam War and in women's history will be engaged. See Joyce Hoffmann's On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam, a compilation of first-person accounts, for additional insight into Vietnam War-era women journalists.--Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An incisive history of the Vietnam War via the groundbreaking accomplishments of three remarkable women journalists. In her latest, Becker, who has covered war and foreign policy for the Washington Post, NPR, and the New York Times, focuses on the careers of Frances FitzGerald, Kate Webb, and Catherine Leroy, interweaving their stories as they traveled to Vietnam in the mid-1960s. As U.S. involvement was escalating and news organizations continued to send men to chronicle the war, these women paid their own ways and sought out freelance reporting opportunities. French photojournalist Leroy was already a licensed parachutist when she arrived in Saigon in 1966. A year later, she became the first journalist to join in a combat parachute jump, and she gained widespread recognition for her up-close images of soldiers in battle, many published in Life. Webb was an Australian freelance correspondent who eventually became the United Press International bureau chief in Phnom Penh. After being captured by North Vietnamese troops operating in Cambodia in 1971, Webb made international headlines when premature reports of her death led to a New York Times obituary--before she emerged from captivity several days later. FitzGerald's arrival coincided with the Buddhist uprising in South Vietnam in 1966. Realizing the events could serve as "a window into an unsettling truth about Vietnam," she sought to understand and write about the Vietnamese on their own terms. Her debut book, Fire in the Lake (1972), won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. "Leroy, FitzGerald, and Webb were the three pioneers who changed how the story of war was told," writes Becker. "They were outsiders--excluded by nature from the confines of male journalism, with all its presumptions and easy jingoism--who saw war differently and wrote about it in wholly new ways." The author was also present as a journalist in the final years when the war shifted to Cambodia, which adds depth and a riveting personal dimension to the book. A deft, richly illuminating perspective on the Vietnam War. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
