Done in a day telex from the fall of Saigon Elisa Tamarkin

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tamarkin, Elisa, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tamarkin, Bob. Diary of S. Viet's last hours.

Tamarkin, Bob.

Chicago daily news (Chicago, Ill. : 1875).

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Press coverage--United States.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Journalists.

Foreign correspondents--United States.

Foreign correspondents.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chicago London University of Chicago Press 2026

Summary:

Named one of Lit Hub's most anticipated books of the year. A searing reflection on the last day of the Vietnam War and the beginning of the end of foreign reporting in the nation's daily newspapers. Done in a Day turns on a single event: the April 30, 1975, departure of the last helicopter evacuating civilians from the rooftop of the US embassy in Saigon. Elisa Tamarkin's interest in that helicopter begins with the fact that her stepfather, Bob Tamarkin, the Saigon bureau chief for the Chicago Daily News, was on it--the last American correspondent to leave Saigon as it fell. His report was filed from a naval ship on the South China Sea at a time when no other telexes were going through. Now, more than fifty years later, Tamarkin offers a social and cultural autopsy of that moment, based in personal history but vividly unfolding amid the vast documentation of America's obvious defeat, which never seemed to register even as it got out, in the writings of journalists and essayists, in the backchannel cables between US ambassador Graham Martin and Henry Kissinger, in congressional hearings, and in photographs of the war's end. The story is also set against the imminent disappearance of war coverage in city newspapers--and of the newspapers themselves--once proud, in the words of the Chicago Daily News, of bringing readers the "literature of the day" that was "done in a day." Done in a Day braids history, criticism, and memoir to tell the paired stories of Saigon's liberation and the demise of the news. The result is a haunting essay about all that ended in a day--and about what it means to recognize and to write about endings even as we live through them

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

One done in a day

Two the last helicopter

Three endit

Four loose ends

Five freefall

Coda the last newspaper

Acknowledgments

Appendix: Bob Tamarkin, "Diary of S. Viet's last hours," Chicago Daily News, May 6, 1975

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter Brill, viewed March 9, 2026)

Contains:

Container of: Tamarkin, Bob. Diary of S. Viet's last hours.

Other Format:

Print version: Tamarkin, Elisa Done in a day

ISBN:

9780226847023

0226847020

OCLC:

1577651734

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license