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ninakinsmn's review against another edition
5.0
There is no rating below 5 stars that I could give this book. This is not because the book is scintillating reading. It is not. It is long, dry, often repetitive, and occasionally boring. I read it in small chunks over several months and probably finished about 8 other books while I was slogging along, with Pete Seeger’s “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” running on a constant loop every time I picked it up to read it. What makes this a 5-star book is that it is an invaluable historical document, providing an almost unique glimpse behind the curtains at how those in power make decisions, how they implement those decisions, and how much they hide what they are doing from the people they are supposed to be serving.
The book contains a veritable treasure trove of information about how the U.S. became involved in Vietnam after WWII and how successive presidential administrations kept wading deeper and deeper into the quagmire without establishing clear goals, exit strategies, or even a definition of victory. As a member of Generation X, I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War. It permeated the culture and the political landscape throughout my youth, but it wasn’t covered much in any of my classes at school because it was too recent and still too divisive. In truth, I think the unresolved tensions of that era continue to have profound impacts on the political discourse in the U.S. to this very day. I’ve been trying to learn more about it for lots of reasons, but probably the most important one is because knowing more in-depth information about major events like the Vietnam War can help one inoculate oneself against the kind of B.S. that world leaders like to sling around about the current conflict du jour and, make no mistake, every world leader lies about foreign policy on a routine basis. Though the Pentagon Papers don’t go beyond the Johnson administration, it is easy to draw parallels to things that happened during the administrations of his successors.
I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about the “behind the scenes” nitty gritty details of the Vietnam War, though I also recommend doing a lot of judicious skimming and/or finding a more readable primer to help you along especially if, like me, you weren’t around when it happened.
The book contains a veritable treasure trove of information about how the U.S. became involved in Vietnam after WWII and how successive presidential administrations kept wading deeper and deeper into the quagmire without establishing clear goals, exit strategies, or even a definition of victory. As a member of Generation X, I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War. It permeated the culture and the political landscape throughout my youth, but it wasn’t covered much in any of my classes at school because it was too recent and still too divisive. In truth, I think the unresolved tensions of that era continue to have profound impacts on the political discourse in the U.S. to this very day. I’ve been trying to learn more about it for lots of reasons, but probably the most important one is because knowing more in-depth information about major events like the Vietnam War can help one inoculate oneself against the kind of B.S. that world leaders like to sling around about the current conflict du jour and, make no mistake, every world leader lies about foreign policy on a routine basis. Though the Pentagon Papers don’t go beyond the Johnson administration, it is easy to draw parallels to things that happened during the administrations of his successors.
I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about the “behind the scenes” nitty gritty details of the Vietnam War, though I also recommend doing a lot of judicious skimming and/or finding a more readable primer to help you along especially if, like me, you weren’t around when it happened.