OUT OF LAOS
April 4, 1996
A Story of War and Exodus,
It is a visual history of the Laos war (1960-1975), a little bit like a printed version of a documentary film. OUT OF LAOS got its start with pictures collected for my nonfiction book BACK FIRE: The CIA's Secret War In Laos (which has just won first prize in the Overseas Press Club's annual book awards). There were too many pictures to print in BACK FIRE, and they seemed to demand both a different treatment and a book of their own.
Many people contributed images to OUT OF LAOS - American pilots, Al J workers and CIA operatives; Thais from the elite force known as Yin the "Paru"; makers and collectors of Hmong and Laotian textiles; and even archivists from the Pathet Lao regime. Together these images form a more complete visual narrative of the Laos war than anything published before.
The publishers of this book, Lue Vang and Judy Lewis of the South east Asia Community Resource Center, and I are now at work putting together a bilingual Hmong/English version of this book. We expect it to be out by late spring or early summer.
OUT OF LAOS is not for sale through regular book stores. Instead, it is being distributed through an alternative system - which means, ultimately, you. If you or your friends want copies of this, the English edition, order them using the form below. (For copies of the Hmong bilingual edition, write the Southeast Asia Community Resource Center at the address in the back of the book.) We'll gladly send ffli~ you single copies, but we'd rather send out more copies at lower prices, for everybody's sake. Groups of friends, student associations, and entrepreneurs are encouraged to buy "six-packs" or"cases" of books to keep expenses down - and to put this story of the Laos war into as many hands as possible.
Roger Warner
171 Argilla Road
Ipswich, MA 01938 USA
Phone: (508) 356-1510
Fax: (508) 356-8434