His friendship with Philippines leader Corazon Aquino did not stop him from criticizing her presidency.Ī salesman's son, Karnow was born in New York in 1925 and by high school was writing radio plays and editing the school's paper, a job he also held at the Harvard Crimson. He was a critic of the Vietnam War (and a name on President Nixon's enemies list) who still found cruelty and incompetence among the North Vietnamese.
His other books included "Mao and China," which in 1973 received a National Book Award nomination, and "Paris in The Fifties," a memoir published in 1997.Ī fellow Vietnam reporter, Morley Safer, would describe Karnow as the embodiment of "the wise old Asian hand." Karnow was known for his precision and research - his Vietnam book reaches back to ancient times - and his willingness to see past his own beliefs.
Karnow's "In Our Image," a companion to a PBS documentary on the Philippines, won the Pulitzer in 1990. Into the 1970s, Karnow would cover the war off and on for Time, The Washington Post and other publications and then draw upon his experience for an epic PBS documentary and for the million-selling "Vietnam: A History," published in 1983 and widely regarded as an essential, even-handed summation. In 1959, Karnow reported on the first two American deaths in Vietnam, not suspecting that tens of thousands would follow. A Paris-based correspondent for Time magazine early in his career, Karnow was assigned in 1958 to Hong Kong as bureau chief for Southeast Asia and soon arrived in Vietnam, when the American presence was still confined to a small core of advisers.
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