Allen, Richard, A Short Introduction to the History and Politics of Southeast Asia, Oxford University Press, 1970.

This concise survey of Southeast Asia is very useful for understanding the political situation in that region in the 1950s. Especially interesting is Allen's discussion of the French involvement in Indochina and their defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which sheds light on the episodes involving Major Monet and Major Wolchek in The Ugly American.

Christie, Clive, “The Quiet American” and “The Ugly American”: Western Literary Perspectives on Indo-China in a Decade of Transition, 1950-1960, University of Kent at Canterbury, Centre of South-East Asian Studies, Occasional Paper No. 10, 1989.

Christie discusses Graham Greene's The Quiet American, The Ugly American, the memoirs of Dr. Thomas Dooley, a U.S. Navy doctor who worked in Vietnam and Laos in the 1950s, and French literature about the war in Indochina. Christie analyzes these...