This landmark work, based on Frances FitzGerald's own research and travels in Southeast Asia in the era of the Vietnam War, takes us inside Vietnam--into the traditional, ancestor-worshiping villages and the corrupt crowded cities, into the conflicts between Communists and anti-Communists, Catholics and Buddhists, generals and monks--and reveals the country as if through Vietnamese eyes. With clarity and authority, Fire in the lake shows how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam.