Reviews

YOU DON'T BELONG HERE

You Don't Belong Here The first week of publication YOU DON’T BELONG HERE was one of the five best reviewed non-fiction books in the country. Tabulated by Book Marks

Asia Times

Three saw war, heroism from different perspective
These woman journalists showed sides of the decade-long Vietnam War that their male counterparts didn’t cover

By Mike Tharp

“To do shorthand violence to this memorable work, it might be said that the male correspondents focused on the blood and guts of Vietnam. Webb, FitzGerald and Leroy focused on the hearts and minds.”

“Becker transforms what could have been a good book into a prize-worthy page-turner of tension, suspense and drama. The tone of the book intensifies with each chapter (all deftly named). Becker never loses sight of her goal to illuminate these women in the larger context of America’s biggest foreign policy disaster of the 20th century.”

Foreign Policy

How 3 Women Broke Into the Uber-Macho World of War Reporting

By Janine Di Giovanni

“In Becker’s compelling book, three extraordinary women—Catherine Leroy, Frances “Frankie” FitzGerald, and Kate Webb—arrive in Vietnam at the height of the war to try to depict the conflict in unique ways. Each is determined to make her mark and to make the war her own. Each becomes captivated by the country, drawn in deeply, and committed to the people and culture. They are equally appalled by the horror of the atrocities and intent on bringing to light the murky U.S. foreign policy in the region.

“She writes beautifully of the heartache the women suffer, their struggles to be taken seriously, the guffaws, the catcalls, the daily small humiliations that amounted to the French photographer’s fierce indictment: You don’t belong here.

“But they did belong. And the proof is their legacy.”

The National Review

5 Hot Books: Iconic Women War Correspondents, the Cost of Racism, and More

You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of Warby Elizabeth Becker (PublicAffairs) Group biography at its best, Becker’s book brings to life its trio of intrepid female journalists who redefined the role of women in war reporting and enhanced appreciation of the nuances of the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The trio were the brilliant magazine writer Frances FitzGerald, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fire in the Lake; stunning photographer Catherine Leroy; and fierce combat reporter Kate Webb. Becker contends that these journalists transformed the war story: “They were outsiders – excluded by nature from the confines of male journalism, with all its presumptions and easy jingoism.” A journalist herself, Becker followed the trail blazed by these women in Southeast Asia, reporting on the war from Cambodia, which gives her a unique, nuanced understanding of the region’s landscape and dynamics.”

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

By Lawrence D. Freedman

“Becker, who made her name reporting on war in Cambodia and the rise of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, delivers an enthralling biography of three female war correspondents who preceded her in Southeast Asia, reporting on the Vietnam War.

Becker blends their individual stories with wider history, setting the unfolding tragedy in Vietnam in the background as her protagonists develop doubts about the logic and legitimacy of the war.”

Book Page

By Deborah Hopkinson

“Many barriers were eventually broken, thanks in part to the extraordinary women Becker profiles so adroitly here, combining their personal histories with the major events of the conflict……You Don’t Belong Here is a significant contribution to the history of both the Vietnam War and women in journalism. “

OVERBOOKED

Elizabeth talks about OVERBOOKED

“An impassioned expose”
— The Wall Street Journal

“Her intelligently written and fascinating book shows that while the lure of travel may be timelessly human, the modern tourist industry is ever changing, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better.”
—Cleveland.com

“As Elizabeth Becker observes in “Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism,” her meticulously reported and often disturbing exposé of the travel industry, the world has gotten smaller — but not often for the better. A former…”
—New York Times

“The definitive account of the rise of the modern tourism industry, from its beginnings as a small, fanciful pastime among elites, to its explosive growth after World War II, to its present as an economic engine valued at $7 trillion.”
—Bloomberg Businessweek

“Elizabeth Becker has found a giant gap in journalistic coverage and stepped squarely into the middle of it. Even though it’s under our noses, beneath our feet, even in our happier dreams, rarely has the investigative story she recounts in her new book previously received the coverage it deserves: The rampant growth of travel and tourism.”
—NationalGeographic.com

“Elizabeth Becker makes a convincing case for treating tourism as the serious, consequential industry it is in “Overbooked,” her thoughtful, sometimes contentious examination of the field. Her research is personal and thorough, her goals admirable, her analysis perceptive…”
—Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Arthur Frommer recommends OVERBOOKED as “required reading for anyone interested in the future of travel.”
—Frommers

“Ms. Becker is a skilled, critical writer delivering illuminating information, telling engaging stories, and advancing her own personal observations. Overbooked appeals to a wide audience: those who make the billion trips annually; those who have a stake in the places impacted, sometimes for better, but all too often for worse, by those travelers’ visits; and all who have a stake in the global economy.”
—NYJournalofBooks.com

“Elizabeth Becker’s latest book was in part, born out of frustration. The seasoned journalist, who got her start as a war correspondent, began to notice a growing global economic force; a sector of the global economy changing whole societies and ecosystems but one relegated to the lifestyle section of most major papers.”
—CNN.com

“Will tourism in America go the way of Venice and Cambodia, or France and Costa Rica? Elizabeth Becker’s thoughtful, informed book should move that discussion along.”
—Seattle Times

WHEN THE WAR WAS OVER

When to War Was Over Cover “A work of the first importance.”
—The New York Times

“The definitive book on the Cambodian revolution…at once impassioned and impartial, the work of a woman who was there and who understands the ideals that connect this period of world history with the people who made it.”
—The Los Angles Times

“Burns with its own fire, the fire of a dedicated writer who witnessed the incomprehensible and worked long and hard to comprehend it….an impressive feat of scholarship and reporting: intelligent, measured, resourceful, and – I do not say this lightly – courageous.”
—The Washington Post

“Monumentally impressive…Becker writes history the way history should be written.”
—The Financial Times

“This brilliant book, refurbished and updated since its original publication, is proper history, in which events begin long before they actually happen, and consequences linger.”
—The Economist

“Enfin, pourrait-on dire, le livre qu’on attendait sur le Cambodge.”
—Le Figaro Magazine