The Ugly American

About this book

The multi-million-copy bestseller that coined the phrase for tragic American blunders abroad. In the episode that lends the book its title the "ugly American" is Homer Atkins a plain and plain-spoken man who has been sent by the U.S. government to advise the Southeast Asian country of Sarkhan on engineering projects. When Atkins finds badly misplaced priorities and bluntly challenges the entrenched interests he lays bare a foreign policy gone dangerously wrong. First published in 1958 The Ugly American became a runaway national bestseller for its slashing expos of American arrogance incompetence and corruption in Southeast Asia. In linked stories and vignettes the book uses gripping storytelling to draw a devastating picture of how the United States was losing the struggle with Communism in Asia.