bulwerka's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
The most in depth profile of the men and decisions that led to a disastrous war, and how it could have been avoided.
paul_cornelius's review against another edition
5.0
Halberstam's classic work on the Vietnam War primarily focuses on the the men who staffed the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Personalities and biographical criticism are central to Halberstam's thesis. He begins by covering the origins of the Cold War and then describes the Cold Warriors who grew out of that time, including Acheson, Rusk, Lodge, Maxwell Taylor, Mac Bundy, Rostow, and the generals who would come to command in Vietnam or serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Included here are Harkins, Wheeler, and, of course, Westmoreland.
The focus of the work is Washington DC, with side trips to Honolulu and Saigon thrown in occasionally. But primarily the is a DC behind the scenes look at how America's commitment to Vietnam arose and developed throughout the 1960s.
What I came away with in this volume is that Vietnam could never have played out any differently than it did. No, that's not Halberstam's view. He is always throwing up "what-if" scenarios. But it is clear to me after having read this that the issue of China predetermined what would occur in Vietnam. With China "lost," no American statesman or general would ever want to be blamed for losing yet another country to Communism. It's to Halberstam's credit that he leaves the reader to this conclusion, although he never accepted it entirely himself.
There are three classic volumes on the Vietnam War. And each one complements the others. Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie does an unsurpassed job of describing the action on the ground, the strategies, tactics, and politics that characterized the war in South Vietnam. Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, meanwhile, provides a comprehensive look at Vietnam's history and the politics of the war in Vietnam. Finally, Halberstam's work supplies the motivations, context, and ideological understanding for how the war seeped into the Kennedy and Johnson administrations before ultimately overwhelming Johnson.
One final note. At times reading this book is frustrating. Halberstam not only indulges in run-on sentences but also seems to scatter parenthetical statements through every other paragraph. Some of his multi-sentence parentheticals are placed within sentences. Nonetheless, the gems of knowledge contained therein are worth the slight inconvenience of the writing style. Nobody studying the Vietnam War can be taken seriously unless they have read Halberstam, Karnow, and Sheehan.
The focus of the work is Washington DC, with side trips to Honolulu and Saigon thrown in occasionally. But primarily the is a DC behind the scenes look at how America's commitment to Vietnam arose and developed throughout the 1960s.
What I came away with in this volume is that Vietnam could never have played out any differently than it did. No, that's not Halberstam's view. He is always throwing up "what-if" scenarios. But it is clear to me after having read this that the issue of China predetermined what would occur in Vietnam. With China "lost," no American statesman or general would ever want to be blamed for losing yet another country to Communism. It's to Halberstam's credit that he leaves the reader to this conclusion, although he never accepted it entirely himself.
There are three classic volumes on the Vietnam War. And each one complements the others. Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie does an unsurpassed job of describing the action on the ground, the strategies, tactics, and politics that characterized the war in South Vietnam. Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, meanwhile, provides a comprehensive look at Vietnam's history and the politics of the war in Vietnam. Finally, Halberstam's work supplies the motivations, context, and ideological understanding for how the war seeped into the Kennedy and Johnson administrations before ultimately overwhelming Johnson.
One final note. At times reading this book is frustrating. Halberstam not only indulges in run-on sentences but also seems to scatter parenthetical statements through every other paragraph. Some of his multi-sentence parentheticals are placed within sentences. Nonetheless, the gems of knowledge contained therein are worth the slight inconvenience of the writing style. Nobody studying the Vietnam War can be taken seriously unless they have read Halberstam, Karnow, and Sheehan.
lwalker77's review against another edition
4.0
This is a great book and, in my opinion, an important book. An examination of the use of power and how those who have it can be mistaken in their understanding of how others will react to it. One of the most informative books Iโve read.
muhly22's review against another edition
5.0
When I picked up this book, I thought I was going to read a book about Vietnam. It's not. Vietnam is at the center of the book, it's there throughout, but it's not a book *about* Vietnam. As Halberstam himself says, it's "a book about America, and in particular about power and success in America, what the country was, who the leadership was, how they got ahead, what their perceptions were about themselves, about the country and about their mission."
If you want to know what was going on on the ground in Vietnam, don't read this book. You won't learn anything about that. But this book is so much more, it's about how the decisions on Vietnam were reached. How were mistakes made? Have recent governments learned from those mistakes? I'm not so sure.
This book reveals the importance of the characters of the men who surround the President, as well as the importance of the President's character. These lessons are certainly applicable to foreign policy, to the decision of whether or not to send troops. But they're also applicable to other types of decisions, even decisions on wholly domestic issues. People with an open mind, a flexible mind, are important. Not just an open and flexible President, but his advisers need to be open and flexible, too. Debate is very important, and not necessarily public debate like we see in Congress. The kind of debate where people are comfortable taking the stances that they believe are right, not just politically proper.
If you want to know what was going on on the ground in Vietnam, don't read this book. You won't learn anything about that. But this book is so much more, it's about how the decisions on Vietnam were reached. How were mistakes made? Have recent governments learned from those mistakes? I'm not so sure.
This book reveals the importance of the characters of the men who surround the President, as well as the importance of the President's character. These lessons are certainly applicable to foreign policy, to the decision of whether or not to send troops. But they're also applicable to other types of decisions, even decisions on wholly domestic issues. People with an open mind, a flexible mind, are important. Not just an open and flexible President, but his advisers need to be open and flexible, too. Debate is very important, and not necessarily public debate like we see in Congress. The kind of debate where people are comfortable taking the stances that they believe are right, not just politically proper.
judyward's review against another edition
5.0
This book was first published in 1972 and has held up quite well over time. It is an examination of the men who were brought into government by President Kennedy and who stayed in government to work with Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately, these "best and brightest" also worked together to form the policies that gradually drew the United States into the war in Vietnam. A must read for anyone who is involved in developing public policy.
intheghetti's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.75
katietmcn's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
Read this for university ๐ฆ
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gmeluski's review against another edition
4.0
A story that makes our entry into the Vietnam war seem like an inevitability. โDovesโ, doubters and realists from both military and civilian life were steamrolled by their own institutions and politics.
dunguyen's review against another edition
3.0
The Best and the Brightest cover the term given to the cabinet of JFK. The title is used ironically as David Halberstam, famous as a journalist during the Vietnam War Era in the US, uses the entire long book analyzing the decisions of the "best and brightest" cabinet and to show how Vietnam ended being a disaster.
The book was written in 1972 so it's right after the Pentagon Papers which showed how the Johnson administration lied to the public about the Vietnam War but before the Nixon Watergate scandal. It's a really long book that starts from the very beginning and by the very beginning, I mean the Second World War and the independence movements that started right after. Halberstam goes into detail of the American strategy for Vietnam. Then he gets into the meat of it by providing a biography of every single person in the administration of JFK and the key players in what was then the Vietnam conflict. He covers the personalities of people like JFK, McNamara, Westmoreland and the battle between the hawks and doves who would push and pull the US towards direct intervention in Vietnam. It's a good book and a very long one too! The portrayals of the key players are very fascinating and while I think Halberstam could have condensed it a lot, the length and breadth does add to an overall image of the various people.
I can't really recommend it as it requires a lot of mental effort to read. This book was written as a passion project of Halberstam's and he is not really being objective at all. Written while the war was still ongoing it does not have enough distance to really be a good history book and is more of a source for a history book. Overall interesting and should be read critically.
The book was written in 1972 so it's right after the Pentagon Papers which showed how the Johnson administration lied to the public about the Vietnam War but before the Nixon Watergate scandal. It's a really long book that starts from the very beginning and by the very beginning, I mean the Second World War and the independence movements that started right after. Halberstam goes into detail of the American strategy for Vietnam. Then he gets into the meat of it by providing a biography of every single person in the administration of JFK and the key players in what was then the Vietnam conflict. He covers the personalities of people like JFK, McNamara, Westmoreland and the battle between the hawks and doves who would push and pull the US towards direct intervention in Vietnam. It's a good book and a very long one too! The portrayals of the key players are very fascinating and while I think Halberstam could have condensed it a lot, the length and breadth does add to an overall image of the various people.
I can't really recommend it as it requires a lot of mental effort to read. This book was written as a passion project of Halberstam's and he is not really being objective at all. Written while the war was still ongoing it does not have enough distance to really be a good history book and is more of a source for a history book. Overall interesting and should be read critically.