The Ugly American - Softcover

Burdick, Eugene; Lederer, William J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393318672 ISBN 13: 9780393318678

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999

Synopsis

The multi-million-copy bestseller that coined the phrase for tragic American blunders abroad.

In the episode that lends the book its title, the "ugly American" is Homer Atkins, a plain and plain-spoken man, who has been sent by the U.S. government to advise the Southeast Asian country of Sarkhan on engineering projects. When Atkins finds badly misplaced priorities and bluntly challenges the entrenched interests, he lays bare a foreign policy gone dangerously wrong.

First published in 1958, The Ugly American became a runaway national bestseller for its slashing exposé of American arrogance, incompetence, and corruption in Southeast Asia. In linked stories and vignettes, the book uses gripping storytelling to draw a devastating picture of how the United States was losing the struggle with Communism in Asia.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Not A Free Country, This Book Would Be Banned.

Authentic, infuriating, and explosively candid, this is the daring, classic bestseller that unmasked the blundering hypocrisy of some of our top-level diplomats. It exposes the opportunism, incompetence, and cynical deceit that have become imbedded in the fabric of our public relations, not only in Asia but all over the world.

From the Back Cover:

"Devastating."

The New York

Times

"A Powerful, Searching Book."

The Los Angeles Times

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0393318672
• ISBN 13: 9780393318678
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288