Frances FitzGerald (born October 21, 1940) is an American journalist and historian, who is primarily known for Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972), an account of the Vietnam War. It was a bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize, Bancroft Prize, and National Book Award.

Early life and education

Frances FitzGerald was born in New York City, the only daughter of Desmond FitzGerald, an attorney on Wall Street, and socialite Marietta Peabody. and from an early age, FitzGerald was introduced to a wide range of political figures. Her parents divorced shortly after World War II. From 1950 to his death in 1967, her father was an intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, becoming a deputy director. Her mother subsequently remarried Ronald Tree, a British journalist, investor and Conservative MP, from that marriage Fitzgerald has a half-sister British model Penelope Tree. expressing her opinion on many subjects, a reflection of her deep interest in world affairs. She graduated from Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia, and magna cum laude from Radcliffe College, then a women's college associated with Harvard University.

Career

thumb|right|FitzGerald in South Vietnam in 1966

FitzGerald became a journalist, initially writing for the New York Herald Tribune magazine. She went to South Vietnam in January 1966. She met Washington Post journalist Ward Just at a party soon after arriving in Saigon and began a relationship with him that continued until she left South Vietnam in November 1966. She formed a close connection with Daniel Ellsberg who was working as an intelligence officer at the U.S. Embassy.

She returned to South Vietnam in early 1974 one year after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords and twice crossed over into Vietcong controlled territory, filing stories for The New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly. She travelled to Hanoi in late 1974 and stayed in North Vietnam into early January 1975, writing a 23-page article for the New Yorker. a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth (2002).

In 1987, FitzGerald received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Robert K. Massie.

Her book Cities on a Hill includes a chapter on Rajneeshpuram, whose rise and fall in the 1980s in Oregon is the subject of the documentary Wild Wild Country.

In 2007, she writes the informative Introduction to the international bestseller Last night I dreamed of peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram, published by Harmony Books, New York, in September 2007.

Her book, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, published in 2017, is a history of the evangelical movement, its central figures, and its long-reaching influence upon American history, politics, and culture. The Evangelicals was shortlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for nonfiction.

FitzGerald has also written numerous articles, which have been published in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Architectural Digest, and Rolling Stone. Her "Rewriting American history" was published in The Norton Reader. She serves on the editorial boards of The Nation and Foreign Policy magazines. She also serves as vice-president of International PEN.

Personal life

FitzGerald is married to James P. Sterba, a former writer for The Wall Street Journal. They live in New York City and Maine. Sterba featured the latter in his 2003 book Frankie's Place: A Love Story.

Books

  • FitzGerald, F. (1972), Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
  • FitzGerald, F. (1979), America Revised
  • FitzGerald, F. (1986), Cities on a Hill: A Journey through Contemporary American Cultures
  • FitzGerald, F. (2000), Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star wars and the End of the Cold War
  • FitzGerald, F. (2001), Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth
  • FitzGerald, F. (2017), The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America

References

  • Index of Frances FitzGerald's articles at the New York Review of Books