Finding the Dragon Lady

Madame Ngo Dinh is a former first lady of South Vietnam. In 1963, at the height of her fame and influence, she was the most powerful woman in Asia and she was compared to Lucrezia Borgia. Her reputation as the Dragon Lady brought her the most attention. Her cruel remarks regarding events in Vietnam soon became a symbol of everything wrong with American involvement in the Vietnam War. She faded from public view after November 1963 when her husband Ngo Dinh Nhu, and his brother, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, were killed in a coup sanctioned and supported by the U.S. government. Plenty of books have established the overthrow of the Ngo brothers as pivotal in the American buildup to war in Vietnam. But Madam Nhu's role has been largely overlooked. How did a woman who was not yet forty years old, barely five feet tall in heels, come to command the full attention of a superpower like America and embroil the United States in a conflict that would last another decade and take millions of lives? Madame Nhu had had a direct hand in shaping history. Her silence had stretched for decades. Although she was rumored to be living in Rome, the author had reason to think she was now in Paris. She set about finding her to see first, if Madame Nhu was still alive, and second, to hear her tell her own story.