Becker, Elizabeth

"The long-buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the barriers to women covering war"--Amazon.

"Travel is no longer a past-time but a colossal industry, arguably one of the biggest in the world and second only to oil in importance for many poor countries. One out of 12 people in the world are employed by the tourism industry which contributes $6.5 trillion to the world's economy. To investigate the size and effect of this new industry, Elizabeth Becker traveled the globe. She speaks to the Minister of Tourism of Zambia who thinks licensing foreigners to kill wild animals is a good way to make money and then to a Zambian travel guide who takes her to see the rare endangered sable antelope. She travels to Venice where community groups are fighting to stop the tourism industry from pushing them out of their homes, to France where officials have made tourism their number one industry to save their cultural heritage; and on cruises speaking to waiters who earn $60 a month--then on to Miami to interview their CEO. Becker's sharp depiction reveals travel as a product; nations as stewards. Seeing the tourism industry from the inside out, the world offers a dizzying range of travel options but very few quiet getaways"--.

The end of the Vietman War saw the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 which caused a closing of the Cambodian border and a systematic reorganization of Cambodian society. Everyone was sent from the towns and cities to the countryside where they were forced to labor endlessly in the fields and the intelligentsia were brutally exterminated. Torture, terror, and death became routine. Almost two million people ( a quarter of the population) were killed.

Chronicles the history of the Vietnam War from the U.S. position as advisors in the late 1950s through the Paris Peace Talks in 1975.