halberstam. george herring. bernard faull, arguably one of our great writers, still on this conflict. so it's striking to me. dan chester, there are a number of these early books that i think right now if you picked them up, you would find you learned a great deal about this conflict. it should also be said, maybe my second point is that, of course, the scholarship that's come out over the last couple of decades i've contributed a bit of this to this myself, i think has been incredibly important. it's given us a whole new a whole new understanding in some respects of the of the struggle. some of it based, obviously, on vietnamese sources, sources in france that i've made use of and others have made use of an incredible outpouring of documentary materials in this country. and and it's it's it's been so important. and yet there's irony here which i think that this new scholarship has really changed the terms of the debate in this country. i'm conscious of the fact that we're still debating the core questions. why

and one of them was a translator for, frankie and me, when we went back to vietnam and halberstam and others named control. and in in danang and mr. cohn told us this wonderful story. he early in the early days, we would take these groups of veterans and they would say, okay, we just don't want to go to the sun valley. we want to go to hill for 52, which is where we during that battle, this or this month or and so these guys were getting a little bit older these veterans and they were getting little more out of shape and so contra and and the other guys would sometimes sort of cheat a little bit they'd take them to the coast sun valley. but they'd drive to where there was a sort of a slightly less arduous hill. they'd say, okay, this is your hill, and you can go up this hill. this is where you fought. well, several years later, when the veterans are even more out of shape and and this is a vietnam humidity heat issue and they to vietnam, except time they had gypsies. and so mr. cong would these people up to his hill where they he said they fought and they'd say, no, not where we fough

david halberstam. he took journalism to a high intellect full level, yet he also had the doggedness of an old fashioned police reporter, colin diver, subject of common ground, said in the excruciating obsessive precision of his research, he reminded us of the cleansing power of truth in his relish for the richness of his material he taught us there can be a richness, even a kind of nobility in the ordinariness of everyday life. the year following his death in 97, his widow, linda healy, joined with friends and colleagues, honor his memory by creating the lucas prize project, which is what brings us together this evening. thank you so much to the judges. these awards who work so hard select tonight's amazing winners among hundreds of entries. some of the judges are with us here. please stand when i say your name. jessica bruder, van shereen meraji, ali al-malik, elizabeth taylor, william thomas and deidre mask. some of our distinguished judges are also past honorees of this prize. thank you. also to ama