Rewriting the Narrative: How Three Women Challenged the Status Quo of War

Annie Stone: Elizabeth Becker’s book is a moving exploration of the lives of three incredibly courageous women who risked everything to bring the real story of the Vietnam War and Cambodian genocide to the world.

It is also a profound meditation on what War does to those who report it, as well as what it did to the Vietnamese and Cambodians.
I couldn’t put it down…

United States on Oct 01, 2023

Phyllis Relyea: I took this book to Aruba for two weeks and found it was NOT a beach read!!
The author does a credible job of portraying three female correspondents and proved they did belong! I was so impressed with the risks they each took to make reports back to US about their observations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
It brought back memories when we visited Anghor Wat with the glass boxes at every crossroads filled with skulls!
It was not a beach read, but a very important read and cannot wait for the discussion with my book group next week, Thanks to Elizabeth Becker for her important research and compilation of these important stories!

United States on Apr 09, 2023

Archie H: Really enjoyed this book ,very informative can’t help but admire these women …….well written also.

Canada on Jan 31, 2023

Pamela: Not only could I not put this book down but I could not turn away from the story it told. I grew up in a small southern town too young to remember the details of the war but it cast a long shadow. I don’t recall it being taught in school. Now I have to look at it and thanks to this book I can look at it through multiple and different lenses.

United States on Oct 17, 2022

Bryon: I enjoyed this perspective on our history

Canada on Mar 01, 2022

John M.: Outstanding look at the lives and work of three of the hundreds of women journalists who covered the wars in Southeast Asia. Catherine Leroy, all 87 pounds of her, jumped into combat with the 173rd in Operation Junction City. Francis Fitzgerald used her privileged class and educational background to advantage as a reporter and eventually author of Fire in the Lake. And Kiwi/Ozzie Kate Webb was a reporter and eventually UPI bureau chief in Phnom Penh, captured by PAVN troops in 1971. Years later, covering the war in Afghanistan, she was take prisoner by and escaped from an Afghan war lord.

A well-told account of the largely unknown but important reporting of these women. The author, Elizabeth Becker, was herself a correspondent in Cambodia during the war, and a particular value of the book is its inclusion of more details of that conflict than usual in books about the “Vietnam War.”

United States on Jun 04, 2021

Amazon Customer: It was pretty well researched and well written. As a very minor point, as a school mate of Kate Webb, I found a couple of discrepancies. She was called Cathy at school and didn’t become Kate until afterwards. The magistrate who dismissed the murder charge against her said the case should never have been bought. And she went to Vietnam at least in part because of the extremely strong anti Vietnam war movement in Australia

Australia on Mar 29, 2021

Steve Learned: Elizabeth Becker has written a definitive, rich-in-detail account of three in-country journalists of the Vietnam/Cambodia wars. A former war correspondent herself, who witnessed the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Becker profiles two print journalists, Frances Fitzgerald and Kate Webb, and daredevil photojournalist Catherine Leroy. As a bonus, Becker slips episodes of her own story into the Kate Webb narrative.
They were young—the oldest of the four was 25—and they paid their own way to Saigon or (in Becker’s case) Phnom Penh. Without credentials, they hoped to find jobs monopolized by men. Becker doesn’t limit her narrative to what these women accomplished professionally. She highlights the challenges they faced growing up and uncovers the relationships they experienced in a male-dominated, wartime environment where expected or rumored romances tracked their careers. Rather than divide her account into three biographical sections, the author blends chronologies to show how the journalists covered overlapping events. This allows Becker to portray the uncensored press and the war’s decision-makers side-by-side.
It is impossible to convey to potential readers...

United States on Feb 25, 2021