The Ugly American is the title of a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. It became a bestseller, was influential at the time, and is still in print. The book is a roman à clef; that is, it presents a (typically) fictionalized setting for the actual—for the U.S. in Vietnam in this case—and portrays several real people, most of whose names have been changed.
The novel describes how the United States is losing the struggle with Communism—what was later to be called the battle for hearts and minds—in Southeast Asia, because of arrogance and failure to understand the local culture.
The book takes place in a fictional nation known as Sarkhan. In the novel, a Burmese journalist says "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious." The phrase "ugly Americans" came to be applied to Americans behaving in this manner.
Ironically, the "ugly American" of the book title actually refers to one of the heroes, a plain-looking engineer named Homer Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their needs, and gives genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump. It is argued in the book that the Communists are successful because they practice tactics similar to Atkins'.
According to an article published in Newsweek in May 1959, "The Ugly American," himself, was identified as an ICA technician named Otto Hunerwadel, who served in Burma from 1949 until his death in 1952.
Another of the book's heroes, Colonel Hillandale, appears to have been modeled on the real-life Air Force Lieutenant General Edward Lansdale, an expert in counter-guerrilla operations.
1963 film
The book was made into a 1963 film starring Marlon Brando as Harrison Carter MacWhite. The film was directed by George Englund.
The late Kukrit Pramoj, a Thai politician and scholar, played the role of Sarkhan's Prime Minister Kwen Sai. Later in 1975 he became the 13th Prime Minister of Thailand.
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