Finalists for the 1992-1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes : HISTORY

TRAGIC MOUNTAINS: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 by Jane Hamilton-Merritt (Indiana University Press). A painful account of the events by which an indigenous and primitive people with a 4,000-year-old culture have been brought to the edge of destruction. The author, a former journalist in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, describes how thousands of Lao Hmong, former U.S. allies in Southeast Asia, now live in refugee camps in Thailand and are being forcibly repatriated to Laos where they face terror and genocide.

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists and winners are selected in each category by an independent panel of judges. Winners will be announced in the Book Review issue of October 31.