UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley, 1927–1961

Book Jacket: "Dr. America" by J. T. Fisher

James T. Fisher

A highly acclaimed biography of the fabled “jungle doctor” of Southeast Asia

This book chronicles the life of Tom Dooley, the American doctor whose much-publicized exploits in Vietnam and Laos during the 1950s helped lay the ideological groundwork for the U.S. military intervention a decade later. A complex and fascinating individual, Dooley was a devoutly religious Roman Catholic as well as a self-styled playboy socialite, a devoted physician to the poor and a tireless propagandist for the "Vietnam Lobby," a shameless self-promoter and a closeted homosexual, a victim of Navy persecution and a beneficiary of CIA support.

In addition to exposing the origins of the Vietnam War, Dooley's story illuminates a broad range of developments in post-World War II United States culture—from the "Americanization" of Catholicism to the rise of the mass media.

"Fisher's subtle, well-told chronicle of a complex mid-century American life turns out to be a compelling work of social history. And Dooley's short life becomes a mirror to a nation's long struggle to figure out what to do with its great power, how to exert it, and where."

Robert Coles, Washington Post Book World (front-page review)
"[Fisher] deftly shows how religion, cold-war intrigue, and show-biz shenanigans came together in 'Dr. America.' Dooley, he persuasively argues, helped to pull American Catholicism away from its insular, angry anti-Communism, providing 'the bridge between Joe McCarthy and Jack Kennedy, to the great benefit of the latter.'"

New York Times Book Review
"An accomplished biography of an almost forgotten, but important, player in American Vietnam War policymaking in the mid- and late 1950s. . . . Fisher presents a deeply researched and highly critical study of a man who in the late 1950s was 'America's first celebrity-saint.' . . . Insightful and enlightening."

Kirkus Reviews
"Saint, sinner, dedicated doctor, or cynical manipulator? The answer is in this well-researched, highly readable book. . . . A must read."

Choice

James T. Fisher holds the Danforth Chair in Humanities at Saint Louis University.

American History / Biography
336 pp., 33 illustrations
LC 96-48652
$37.50 cloth
$24.95t paper, ISBN 1-55849-154-6
1998
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A volume in the series Culture, Politics, and the Cold War

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