Krementz, Jill. The Face of South Vietnam. Photos by Jill Krementz.

Houghton Mifflin, 1968. First edition, first printing.  Hardcover in cloth with protected dust jacket. Ex-library, shelf wear at bottom edge, cutout at base of dust jacket spine, card pocket remnant on rear flyleaf. Text by Dean Brelis. Photographs by Jill Krementz in second half of book. 250 pages.  Summary:

The Face of South Vietnam is a nonfiction photographic chronicle of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s. It combines Dean Brelis’s firsthand written observations as an NBC foreign correspondent with omore than 100 black-and-white photographs by Jill Krementz, who traveled through the country documenting its people and landscapes.

Rather than focusing primarily on military strategy or high politics, the book aims to reveal the human face of a country at war — showing not just soldiers and battlefields, but civilians going about daily life under the strain of conflict. Krementz’s images capture a wide range of scenes: from wounded American soldiers and displaced Vietnamese civilians to ordinary moments of life such as weddings, hairdressers at work, and diplomats at leisure.

The text and photographs together offer a poignant, emotional portrait of South Vietnam — one that touches on the brutal realities of violence and suffering, but also on the enduring humanity of its people. Reviewers at the time noted that the work doesn’t serve as a polemic or political argument; instead, it invites readers into intimate, sometimes unsettling contact with the effects of war on individuals and communities, generating reflection and empathy.

In short, The Face of South Vietnam is a visual and narrative essay on a nation in wartime, aiming to show what the war looked and felt like to those who lived it.

Jill Krementz (born February 19, 1940) is an American photographer and author who has published dozens of books spanning photography collections and children's literature. Beginning her career as a photojournalist in the 1960s—working for the New York Herald Tribune and covering major historical assignments, including a year in Vietnam and the 1967 March on the Pentagon—she later established herself as a preeminent portraitist of literary figures. By building an extensive archive of black-and-white author portraits, she published notable compilations such as The Writer's Image and The Writer's Desk. In addition to her photographic work, she created acclaimed children's nonfiction books, received the Washington Post/Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award, and was married to the novelist Kurt Vonnegut from 1979 until his death in 2007.