Richard Subber's Reviews > Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam

I don’t know how much of an audience there was for Fire in the Lake in 1972. I feel confident in guessing there wasn’t enough.
The American war in Vietnam was far from over in 1972 when FitzGerald wrote this densely researched journalistic review of U. S. policies and actions and ignorance in Southeast Asia. She makes it easier to understand why the American war effort was doomed from its earliest phase.
Read Fire in the Lake to get the whole story as it was knowable in 1972. Be prepared to acknowledge that much of what you previously believed—and thought you knew—was wrong.
The American commitment to “containing Communism” was prominent, and, I believe, mostly sincere, albeit tragically uninformed.
South Vietnam was the wrong place to try to “contain Communism.”
There are more than 58,000 names on the walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
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