📔 Book: The Ultimate Protest

Author:: Ray E. Boomhower;
buddhism

Highlights

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• Using an inexpensive, Japanese-brand Petri 35mm camera, he captured on film the self-immolation of a senior Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, while the monk sat calmly on a cushion in the traditional lotus position at the intersection of two busy streets in Saigon. “I think it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen,” Browne said years later. His stunning image of a man giving his life for his cause appeared on the front pages of American newspapers from Lawrence, Kansas, to Cumberland, Maryland; from Bluefield, West Virginia, to Colorado Spring, Colorado. “That picture put the Vietnam War on the front page more than anything else that happened before. That’s where the story stayed for the next 10 years or more,” noted Hal Buell, AP deputy photo editor in New York
• Gallico even dared go into the ring to spar with heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey; the champ knocked him out. “Life for him was a quest for the greatest possible range and depth of experience,” Browne said of Gallico, “including physical sensations, of course, but much more. That’s the way to do it. The Feel is the way to top-flight journalism.
• The agent told Browne he should read the writings of Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander of Communist North Vietnam’s military forces and victor over the French at the crucial battle at Dien Bien Phu. Browne read Giap’s best-known book, People’s War, People’s Army. Although put off by its sometimes “turgid Marxist-Leninist style,” the American reporter was impressed by its practical good sense, and it seemed to him that “a lot of American officials were missing an important part of their education by neglecting it,” as it represented a classic politico-military warfare textbook