The Ugly American

novel by Lederer and Burdick

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

The Ugly American, novel by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick, published in 1958. A fictionalized account of Americans working in Southeast Asia, the book was notable chiefly for exposing many of the deficiencies in U.S. foreign-aid policy and for causing a furor in government circles. Eventually the uproar led to a congressional review of foreign aid. Although some of the novel’s characters are committed to the local people, many others are incompetent and out of touch with and ill-informed about the people they are supposedly helping. The term “ugly American” has since passed into the language as an expression of the boorishness and insensitive parochialism of Americans abroad.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.