David Halberstam
Paperback | Pages: 688 pages Rating: 4.28 | 9829 Users | 445 Reviews
Specify Books Concering The Best and the Brightest
| Original Title: | The Best and the Brightest |
| ISBN: | 0449908704 (ISBN13: 9780449908709) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Cornelius Ryan Award (1969), National Book Award Finalist for Contemporary Affairs (1973) |
Representaion In Favor Of Books The Best and the Brightest
The Best and the Brightest is David Halberstam's masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy. Using portraits of America's flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country's recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam and why did it lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It's an American classic.Identify Epithetical Books The Best and the Brightest
| Title | : | The Best and the Brightest |
| Author | : | David Halberstam |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | 20th Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 688 pages |
| Published | : | October 26th 1993 by Ballantine Books (first published 1969) |
| Categories | : | History. Nonfiction. Politics. War. North American Hi.... American History |
Rating Epithetical Books The Best and the Brightest
Ratings: 4.28 From 9829 Users | 445 ReviewsAssessment Epithetical Books The Best and the Brightest
"It sounds unspeakably dull and ponderous; it was not. I found I could not put the book down. It had all the ingredients of a great novel: a tragic plot of almost Shakespearean proportions, a fascinating cast of characters, and some wonderful writing." Liaquat Ahamed, The Independent. 01 January 2010"In 1963, the notion that a newspaper reporter might challenge the official story of generals and ambassadors in the middle of a war, essentially accusing them of lying, was so improbable that itThis book features almost all the people who had a hand in the decision on the US involvement in Vietnam. There was no question that these were the best and the brightest, which all more makes the reader wonder why the US eventually found herself in the quagmire. By the end of the book the reader may still not find the answer, but what he or she will find is a lesson in human folly and how the illusion of superior ability can lead one to arrogance, or perhaps less, over-confidence, but ending in
The main question about World War 1 that Barbara Tuchmann's seminal The Guns of August was trying to answer was "How did this happen?" How did all these complacent European countries, many of whose leaders were related, with no clear reason to go to war, and with uncounted amounts of wealth in trade and prosperity at stake, end up sending millions of their youth to die in the mud over marginal amounts of land that they didn't even really want? Tuchmann identified a number of cognitive errors
Halberstam gives us the inside story of how America entrapped itself in the Viet Nam War. He shows how the legacy of McCarthyism and 1940s politics over China left a decimated State Department and influenced JFKs and LBJs thinking. He details the many times JFK and others who doubted the war altered their positions out of fear of being seen as soft. He shows how the arrogance and overconfidence of Kennedys team and subsequently Johnsons led the US into war. He takes us through the constant
A true classic.
Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. After attending his first Cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara. Well, Lyndon, Mister Sam answered, you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but Id feel a whole
Tragic in the truest sense. It shows the cost of huebris and reminds us that even the best of our leaders cannot really see the end from the beginning. Real leaders with equal parts curiousity to ask question after question and the skeptism to evaluate answers from all angles are rare indeed.
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