Finding the Dragon Lady

Finding the Dragon Lady PDF Author: Monique Demery
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1610392817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Describes the life of the First Lady of South Vietnam, a glamorous, sexy and controversial figure known as the “Dragon Lady” who lived in exile after a U.S.-backed coup killed her husband and brother-in-law during the Vietnam War.

The Dragon Lady

The Dragon Lady PDF Author: Louisa Treger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1448217393
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
'A daring blend of romance, crime and history, and an intelligent exposé of the inherent injustice and consequences of all forms of oppression' Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions Opening with the shooting of Lady Virginia 'Ginie' Courtauld in her tranquil garden in 1950s Rhodesia, The Dragon Lady tells Ginie's extraordinary story, so called for the exotic tattoo snaking up her leg. From the glamorous Italian Riviera before the Great War to the Art Deco glory of Eltham Palace in the thirties, and from the secluded Scottish Highlands to segregated Rhodesia in the fifties, the narrative spans enormous cultural and social change. Lady Virginia Courtauld was a boundary-breaking, colourful and unconventional person who rejected the submissive role women were expected to play. Ostracised by society for being a foreign divorcée at the time of Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson, Ginie and her second husband ,Stephen Courtauld, leave the confines of post-war Britain to forge a new life in Rhodesia, only to find that being progressive liberals during segregation proves mortally dangerous. Many people had reason to dislike Ginie, but who had reason enough to pull the trigger? Deeply evocative of time and place, The Dragon Lady subtly blends fact and fiction to paint the portrait of an extraordinary woman in an era of great social and cultural change.

Revenge of the Dragon Lady

Revenge of the Dragon Lady PDF Author: Kate McMullan
Publisher: ABDO
ISBN: 9781599613789
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
After accidentally killing a dragon, Wiglaf hopes his friends at Dragon Slayers' Academy will be able to help him prove himself a hero when he faces that dragon's mother, Seetha, the Beast from the East. Follow Wiglaf's adventures at Dragon Slayers' Academy as he discovers more about his past and what the future holds for him.

Dragon Ladies

Dragon Ladies PDF Author: Sonia Shah
Publisher: South End Press
ISBN: 9780896085756
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
'Explores the emergence of a distinct Asian-American feminist movement through the perspectives of well-known Asian-American activists, writers and artists.' Ms. Magazine

Finding the Dragon Lady

Finding the Dragon Lady PDF Author: Monique Demery
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1610392817
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Describes the life of the First Lady of South Vietnam, a glamorous, sexy and controversial figure known as the “Dragon Lady” who lived in exile after a U.S.-backed coup killed her husband and brother-in-law during the Vietnam War.

Dragon Lady

Dragon Lady PDF Author: Sterling Seagrave
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Book Description
"The last empress of China--Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (1835-1908)--is remembered as one of history's monsters, an iron-willed concubine who, after usurping power in 1861, ruled from the Dragon Throne for half a century. Her reign, in the aftermath of the Opium Wars and through the Boxer Rebellion until the collapse of the 2,000-year-old empire, has traditionally been seen as one of murder, poison, and intrigue. But the wicked image is false." "In 1974, to the dismay of scholars, Sir Edmund Backhouse--the biographer most responsible for the widespread vision of Tzu Hsi as monster--was revealed to be a con man. And now the author of the celebrated best-seller The Soong Dynasty has undertaken the first complete reappraisal of the empress--exposing Backhouse's writings about her as a major hoax and forgery, and establishing that the most important Western correspondent in Peking during her reign--Dr. George Morrison of the London Times--kept a secret diary contradicting his own dispatches about Tzu Hsi." "Drawing on many unpublished or long-overlooked contemporary sources, Sterling Seagrave shows us Tzu Hsi as a complex woman whose desperate--though often misguided--efforts to hold her country together take on a different coloration in the context of unrelenting foreign attempts to colonize and tear it apart. Far from being all-powerful, she was actually a hostage of vengeful Manchu princes who were using her in a power struggle against both Chinese reformers and foreign interference." "Here at last is an authentic portrait of this fascinating historical figure, as well as insight into the Western craving to believe in a sinister, dragon-haunted Orient. Dragon Lady is at once a compelling biography and the equally compelling story of how a myth was contrived, how it endured, and how, ultimately, the truth has emerged."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady

The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady PDF Author: Sharon J. Mondragon
Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Remembering the Dragon Lady

Remembering the Dragon Lady PDF Author: Gerald McIlmoyle
Publisher: Severn House Paperbacks
ISBN: 9781908916938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
With heightened tensions mounting in the Cold War, President Dwight Eisenhower's request for more accurate intelligence information on the Soviet Union was the spark that ignited the U-2 project. Modified USAF bombers began overflights of the Soviet Union in 1951, but existing lower flying aircraft in the US inventory were vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire and a number of cross-border flights were shot down. To meet the challenge and improve the survivability, the Lockheed Corporation received approval for their revolutionary design of a new recon aircraft on December 9, 1954. The company began work under a heavy veil of secrecy with only 81 people, including 25 engineers. A test pilot flew the first flight on August 1, 1955, after only eight months of production, a record-breaking result for rollout of a new project, especially one this complex and innovative. A dedicated and inventive group of contractors came together to support the project with partial pressure suits for pilots, high-resolution cameras, and an engine that could carry the aircraft to altitudes of 70,000 feet and higher. Nicknamed the Dragon Lady, the U-2 has flown over Cuba, Alaska, North and South poles, Vietnam, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, and Afghanistan. The U-2 is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. More recently it flew over the hurricane ravaged US Gulf Coast to collect imagery of the destruction over a 90,000 square mile area. First-person memoirs of many of the men who supported the early US spy plane project are included in this book. They include pilots, maintenance specialists, a flight surgeon, photographic specialists and some family members. The US also trained U-2 pilots from Taiwan and the UK and some of their photos and memoirs are in this collection. An example of the entries in the book include one pilot's experience on a flight over the North Pole when he discovered his instrumentation was inaccurate due to the magnetic fields and realized almost too late that he was flying directly toward the Soviet Union. Maintenance technicians recalled working long hours to prepare aircraft for historic flights over Cuba. Photographic specialists remembered the difficult conditions in Vietnam, and the care required to download the exposed film of North Vietnamese targets from the cameras in the aircraft. All of these experiences were achieved under Top Secret security conditions and on a "need to know" basis.

Finding the Dragon Lady

Finding the Dragon Lady PDF Author: Monique Brinson Demery
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610392825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In November 1963, the president of South Vietnam and his brother were brutally executed in a coup that was sanctioned and supported by the American government. President Kennedy later explained to his close friend Paul "Red" Fay that the reason the United States made the fateful decision to get rid of the Ngos was in no small part because of South Vietnam's first lady, Madame Nhu. "That goddamn bitch," Fay remembers President Kennedy saying, "She's responsible ... that bitch stuck her nose in and boiled up the whole situation down there." The coup marked the collapse of the Diem government and became the US entry point for a decade-long conflict in Vietnam. Kennedy's death and the atrocities of the ensuing war eclipsed the memory of Madame Nhu -- with her daunting mixture of fierceness and beauty. But at the time, to David Halberstam, she was "the beautiful but diabolic sex dictatress," and Malcolm Browne called her "the most dangerous enemy a man can have." By 1987, the once-glamorous celebrity had retreated into exile and seclusion, and remained there until young American Monique Demery tracked her down in Paris thirty years later. Finding the Dragon Lady is Demery's story of her improbable relationship with Madame Nhu, and -- having ultimately been entrusted with Madame Nhu's unpublished memoirs and her diary from the years leading up to the coup -- the first full history of the Dragon Lady herself, a woman who was feared and fantasized over in her time, and who singlehandedly frustrated the government of one of the world's superpowers.

Dragon Lady

Dragon Lady PDF Author: Gary Alexander
Publisher: Istoria Books
ISBN: 1452449988
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
In 1965 Saigon, Joe, a young draftee, becomes obsessed with a Vietnam girl named Mai, his own Dragon Lady from his beloved Terry and the Pirates cartoon strips that his mother still sends him. As he pursues a relationship with her, Saigon churns with intrigue and rumors will the U.S. become more involved with the Vietnamese struggle? What is going on with a special unit that is bringing in all sorts of (for the time) high tech equipment? Will the U.S. make Vietnam the 51st state and bomb aggressors to oblivion? But for Joe, the big question is does Mai love him or will she betray more than just his heart? Gary Alexanders intelligent voice, filled with dry wit, and his own experiences give this story a sharp sense of truth, recounting the horror and absurdity of war. Reminiscent of books such as Catch 22, Dragon Lady serves up equal measures of outrageous humor and poignant remembrance.

An American Brothel

An American Brothel PDF Author: Amanda Boczar
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501761374
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
In An American Brothel, Amanda Boczar considers sexual encounters between American servicemen and civilians throughout the Vietnam War, and she places those fraught and sometimes violent meetings in the context of the US military and diplomatic campaigns. In 1966, US Senator J. William Fulbright declared that "Saigon has become an American brothel." Concerned that, as US military involvement in Vietnam increased so, too, had prostitution, black market economies, and a drug trade fueled by American dollars, Fulbright decried an arrogance of power on the part of Americans and the corrosive effects unchecked immorality could have on Vietnam as well as on the war effort. The symbol, at home and abroad, of the sweeping social and cultural changes was often the so-called South Vietnamese bar girl. As the war progressed, peaking in 1968 with more than half a million troops engaged, the behavior of soldiers off the battlefield started to impact affect the conflict more broadly. Beyond the brothel, shocking revelations of rapes and the increase in marriage applications complicated how the South Vietnamese and American allies cooperated and managed social behavior. Strictures on how soldiers conducted themselves during rest and relaxation time away from battle further eroded morale of disaffected servicemen. The South Vietnamese were loath to loosen moral restrictions and feared deleterious influence of a permissive wWestern culture on their society. From the consensual to the coerced, sexual encounters shaped the Vietnam War. Boczar shows that these encounters—sometimes facilitated and sometimes banned by the US military command—restructured the South Vietnamese economy, captivated international attention, dictated military policies, and hung over diplomatic relations during and after the war.