Page 11 - The University of Wisconsin Press Spring 2013
Basic HTML Version
HISTORY / POLITICS / VIETNAM WAR
“A classic. . . . No American should be able to read
[this book] without weeping at his country’s arro-
gance.”
Anthony Lewis,
New York Times
During the Vietnam War the United States government waged a massive, secret
air war in neighboring Laos. Two million tons of bombs were dropped on one
million people. Fred Branfman, an educational advisor living in Laos at the time,
interviewed over 1,000 Laotian survivors. Shocked by what he heard and saw,
he urged them to record their experiences in essays, poems, and pictures.
Voices
from the Plain of Jars
was the result of that effort.
When first published in 1972, this book was instrumental in exposing the
bombing. In this expanded edition Branfman follows the story forward in time,
describing the hardships that Laotians faced after the war when they returned to
find their farm fields littered with cluster munitions—explosives that continue to
maim and kill today.
“In this small, shattering book we hear—as we are so rarely able to do—
the voices of Asian peasants describing what we can barely begin to
imagine.”—
Gloria Emerson,
New York Review of Books
“Today, the significance of this book’s message has, if anything,
increased. As Fred Branfman predicted with uncommon prescience,
the massive U.S. bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War marked the
advent of a new kind of warfare—automated, aerial, and secret—that
is just now emerging as the dominant means of projecting U.S. power
worldwide.”—Alfred W. McCoy, author of
Torture and Impunity: The
U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
Fred Branfman
is a writer and activist on issues of peace and climate
change who lives in Santa Barbara, California, and in Budapest.
MAY
LC: 2012032677 DS
176 PP. 5 ½ X 8 ¼ 34 B/W ILLUS.
E-BOOK $15.95 ISBN 978-0-299-29223-2
• Prior edition: harPer & row usa, 1972,
PAPER ISBN 0-060-90300-7
New Perspectives in Southeast
Asian Studies
Alfred W. McCoy, R. Anderson
Sutton, Thongchai Winichakul, and
Kenneth M. George, Series Editors
UWPRESS
.
WISC
.
EDU
11
O f r e l a t e d i n t e r e s t
“Shows that crossing both physical and
ideological borders is necessary to get at
the truth of this fascinating country. . . .
Highly recommended.”—
Choice
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2006
LC: 2005032883 DS
400 PP. 6 × 9 5 B/W PHOTOS,
10 B/W ILLUS., 2 MAPS, 7 TABLES
E-BOOK $16.95 ISBN 978-0-299-21773-0
New Perspectives in Southeast
Asian Studies
Fred Branfman among ancient stone jars on the Plain of
Jars, Laos.
