Affiliation during program: The Los Angeles Times
Title: Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns (Public Affairs, 2002)
David Lamb’s travels as a foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times have taken him to more than 120 countries and to all seven continents during his 31 years with the paper. He has covered the Vietnam War, the Iranian revolution, the overthrow of Idi Amin in Uganda, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the African famine, the Rwanda massacres, the Persian Gulf War, the popular uprising in Indonesia in 1998, the anarchy in East Timor in 1999 and President Clinton’s official visit to Vietnam in 2000. His reporting has been nominated eight times for a Pulitzer Prize.
A native of Boston and a 1962 graduate of the University of Maine’s School of Journalism, Mr. Lamb began his career with The Okinawa Morning Star, then moved on to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Oakland Tribune and to United Press International in San Francisco, Denver and Saigon, where, from 1968 to 1970, he worked as a battlefront correspondent. He joined The Times in 1970 and has been based in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington and has been bureau chief in Sydney, Nairobi, Cairo and Hanoi. He covered the fall of Saigon in April 1975 on a temporary assignment for The Times.
He spent nearly eight years in Africa, the last three and a half of them in Egypt covering North Africa and the Middle East, Mr. Lamb returned to The Times Washington bureau in 1985. His reporting and research for three books have taken him to 50 of Africa’s 51 countries, to all 21 Arab countries and to the 10 countries of Southeast Asia. Mr Lamb was The Times’ Southeast Asia bureau chief from 1997 to 2001, based in Hanoi. He left the paper in 2004 after 34 years and now freelances.
Mr. Lamb is the author of six books: The Africans, The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage, Stolen Season: A Journey Through America and Baseball’s Minor Leagues, A Sense of Place: Listening to Americans, Over The Hills: A Midlife Escape Across America By Bicycle, and Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns, all published by Random House. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Readers Digest, and Sports Illustrated. Mr. Lamb has been a Nieman fellow (1980-81) and an Alicia Patterson Fellow (1985-86) and was writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California’s School of Journalism (1986).