Half a century after the nation’s fateful early missteps into the quagmire, what are Americans likely to remember about the Vietnam War?

A Buddhist monk, doused with gasoline, squatting stoically in the street as roaring flames consume his body.

An enemy prisoner grimacing as a bullet fired from a pistol at the end of an outstretched arm enters his brain.

A 9-year-old girl running naked down the road, screaming as her skin burns from napalm.

Perhaps even more viscerally even than on television, America’s most wrenching war in our time hit home in photographs, including these three searing prize-winning images from The Associated Press newsmen Malcolm W. Browne, Eddie Adams and Nick Ut. They are the subject of retrospectives now, in a new book and accompanying exhibitions.