Street without Joy is a 1961 book about the First Indochina War (1946–1954); it was revised in 1964. The author Bernard B. Fall was a French-American professor and journalist. He had been on-site as a French soldier, and then as an American war correspondent. The book gives a first-hand look at the French engagement, with an insider understanding of Vietnamese events, and provided insights into guerrilla warfare. It drew wide interest among Americans in the mid-1960s, when their own country markedly increased its activity in the Vietnam War. The title of the book was taken from the name given by French soldiers to a stretch of Route 1 which had been fortified by their enemies, the Viet Minh. It ran along the central coast of Vietnam from Huế north to Quảng Trị. In French it was called La Rue Sans Joie. The book Fall's book Street without Joy is a "sketch" or essay on the military-political history of the war largely fought between the French Army, who sought to reclaim Vietnam, and the Viet Minh, a force organized by Vietnamese communists, who resisted. Earlier during World War II, the Japanese Army had in September 1940 attacked and conquered French Indochina. Following Japan's defeat in the Asia-Pacific War and withdrawal of its forces, this new war began. It ended in 1954 with the Geneva accords, whereby France withdrew from north Vietnam, the Viet Minh from south Vietnam. For the time being, an independent Vietnam was divided into two states, North and South. Street without Joy does not pretend to provide a comprehensive account of the First Indochinese War. It focuses almost entirely on the period after 1950 when Chinese and American intervention had both enlarged and internationalized the conflict. It is episodic, singling out for special attention a series of major French operations... , [including] Operation Camargue, a 1953 effort to clean up the Vietminh-infested area known by French soldiers as the 'street without joy'." The book was widely praised for its insider depiction of Vietnam, its people and culture. Especially, it recounted how the French forces were unable to adequately comprehend the 'people's war' their Vietnamese foes were fighting.Frances FitzGerald, the journalist and author of Fire in the Lake (1972), describes Street without Joy as, "[H]is major work on the French war [where] he argued that the nature of the conflict was political rather than simply military and described the