Jim Laurie
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JIM LAURIE is an award-winning international broadcaster, writer and media consultant who has witnessed many defining moments in Asia's history over the past 50 years. A recipient of Emmy, Peabody and Overseas Press Club Awards, Jim roamed the world as a radio and television correspondent first for NBC News, 1972-1978, and then ABC News 1978-2000. His book THE LAST HELICOPTER: Two Lives in Indochina recounts his earliest days in Cambodia and Vietnam. Jim has also produced and written documentary films on Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan, and China and interviewed noted world leaders over the past 50 years including China's Deng Xiaoping, India's Indira Gandhi, Cambodia's Norodom Sihanouk, the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and the Dalai Lama of Tibet.
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The Last Helicopter: Two Lives in Indochina
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Memoir, History, Biography
THE LAST HELICOPTER is a story of a young woman left behind and a young reporter coming of age in a world of war; a gripping memoir of Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1970’s. As brutal wars in Cambodia and Vietnam come to swift and cataclysmic ends, a young reporter plans a last minute rescue of a woman he loved. The rescue fails. He is helicoptered out of the Cambodian capital days before its collapse and goes on to Vietnam in time to see the fall of Saigon. He vows somehow to return to keep his promise of rescue. Meanwhile, his former lover, Sinan, is trapped in what she calls “my prison without walls” at one of the Khmer Rouge’s infamous commune work camps. Drawn from recorded interviews with Soc Sinan and from the contemporaneous writings of Jim Laurie, The Last Helicopter captures the drama and tensions of the 1970s, while recalling places of grace and beauty now gone forever. “This is a love story on so many different levels... the memories of a young war correspondent learning his craft and falling in love. Cambodia and Viet Nam are, first the backdrop and ultimately the essence of the story. A wonderful book.” —TED KOPPEL, Broadcast Journalist 
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