PROCHNAU : Once upon a distant war (fülszöveg)
IN THE BEGINNING IT WAS SUCH A NICE LITTLE WAR. No sense of impending disaster hung over Vietnam in 1961, no hint of an Apocalypse Now future that would sear the American psyche for a generation. With only a few American advisers on hand and a handful of war correspondents to send the news home as the military force slowly grew larger, Saigon remained a steamy Oriental backwater of dark intrigue and mesmerizing romance. Buddhist monks in saffron robes moved quietly through a babble of Hindu moneychangers. Women of exotic Asian beauty glided by in silken ao dais. Expatriate Chinesè with three-strand beards and opaque eyes introduced visitors to the ancient pleasures of the poppy. Vietnam captivated the first Americans – the military men, the self-certain civilians, and the war correspondents too. Captivated them like a Venus flytrap.
In Once Upon a Distant War William Prochnau vividly brings to life the adventures of the small group of young, audacious, and driven war correspondents who first put Vietnam on America's doorstep. With the lyrical, evocative writing of a novelist and the experienced eye of a prize winning journalist, Prochnau brings back an almost forgotten time and place – before the earth was cratered by B-52s and scorched by search-and-destroy missions.
Prochnau draws the characters powerfully, telling their story in the high drama of two years of living dangerously as the correspondents are shot at in the field, beaten in the streets, and threatened with assassination. Their own government denounces them as communists and traitors, too young to know any better. So do many of their older colleagues. Their editors doubt them and try to rein them in. Instead, they become legends, the vanguard of the rebellious, unruly modem media of today. Among their ranks:
David Halberstam, The NewYork Times's "brilliant brat," determined at age twenty-eight to loom the largest, writing both the history and myth of his time, a man whose angers silenced Saigon bistros with table-pounding demands that the U.S. commanding general be court-martialed and shot.
Neil Sheehan, twenty-five and green as grass, the "kid" everybody liked, driven by private haunts and his own deep need for a truth impossible to find. Vietnam would dig into him like an angry wood tick and hang on for decades.
Malcolm Browne, the eccentric loner who wore red socks and a death's head ring into battle. His world-famous photo of a flaming Buddhist's protest suicide changed the story forever.
Peter Arnett, who duked it out with the secret police and turned his head at every swish of Asian silks; Horst Faas, the German combat photographer who spent his life living down words he swore he never spoke: "Vot I like iss boom-boom"; Charley Mohr, the toughest of them all, a man who loved his Beretta and received the rarest honor, a Bronze Star for bravery from the Marines.
Once Upon a Distant War follows the correspondents through their brushes with the diabolical Dragon Lady Madame Nhu; their showdowns with John F. Kennedy, Robert S. McNamara, and a self-deluding American officialdom that saw victory around every corner. Prochnau's masterful book is important history as well as great story-telling, a meticulously researched look at America as it stumbles blindly into the swamp.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
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