
The Ultimate Protest
Malcolm W. Browne, Thich Quang Duc, and the News Photograph That Stunned the World
Ray E. Boomhower(Author)
High Road Books (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 30. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
344 pages
978-0-8263-6948-2 (ISBN)
Description
The Ultimate Protest: Malcolm W. Browne, Thich Quang Duc, and the News Photograph That Stunned the World examines how the most unlikely of war correspondents, Malcolm W. Browne, became the only Western reporter to capture Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc’s horrific self-immolation on June 11, 1963. Quang Duc made his ultimate sacrifice to protest the perceived anti-Buddhist policies of the Catholic-dominated administration of South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem.
Biographer Ray E. Boomhower’s The Ultimate Protest explores the background of the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam in the spring of 1963 that led to Quang Duc’s self-sacrifice as well as the worldwide reaction to Browne’s photograph, how it affected American policy toward Diem’s government, and the role the image played in the violent coup on November 1, 1963, that deposed Diem and led to his assassination. The book also delves into the dynamics involved in covering the Vietnam War in the early days of the American presence and the pressures placed on the journalists to stop raising doubts about how the war was going. Browne and his colleague David Halberstam shared the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their work in Vietnam.
Biographer Ray E. Boomhower’s The Ultimate Protest explores the background of the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam in the spring of 1963 that led to Quang Duc’s self-sacrifice as well as the worldwide reaction to Browne’s photograph, how it affected American policy toward Diem’s government, and the role the image played in the violent coup on November 1, 1963, that deposed Diem and led to his assassination. The book also delves into the dynamics involved in covering the Vietnam War in the early days of the American presence and the pressures placed on the journalists to stop raising doubts about how the war was going. Browne and his colleague David Halberstam shared the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their work in Vietnam.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
University of New Mexico Press
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
326 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8263-6948-2 (9780826369482)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ray E. Boomhower is a senior editor at the Indiana Historical Society Press. His books include The Soldier's Friend: A Life of Ernie Pyle, Dispatches from the Pacific: The World War II Reporting of Robert L. Sherrod, and Richard Tregaskis: Reporting Under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam (UNM Press).