On their own

"In unprecedented numbers beginning in the 1960s, women defied tradition and began to take for themselves the warfront assignments that few American editors were inclined to offer any female. Their print and broadcast reports of America's twenty-year entanglement in Southeast Asia enlarged America's understanding of the war and left an indelible mark on journalism." "Propelled by a desire to tell their generation's biggest story, most of the women who aspired to this mythic male pursuit landed in Saigon on one-way tickets, with near-empty wallets and little experience. In a series of overlapping biographies about a central group of women who invented themselves as war correspondents, this book tells a gripping yet largely unknown story of perseverance and triumph. With its portraits of Gloria Emerson, Frances FitzGerald, Kate Webb, and Beverly Deepe, among others, women who covered the war are, at last, woven into the vast tapestry of Vietnam-era history."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.