2024 the best and the brightest book review

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(as of Oct 22, 2024 00:35:13 UTC - Details)

David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a foreword by Senator John McCain.

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.” (The New York Times)

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 we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.

“The most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam.... It is also the Iliad of the American empire and the Odyssey of this nation’s search for its idealistic soul. The Best and the Brightest is almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.” (The Boston Globe)

“Deeply moving... We cannot help but feel the compelling power of this narrative.... Dramatic and tragic, a chain of events overwhelming in their force, a distant war embodying illusions and myths, terror and violence, confusions and courage, blindness, pride, and arrogance.” (Los Angeles Times)

“A fascinating tale of folly and self-deception... [An] absorbing, detailed, and devastatingly caustic tale of Washington in the days of the Caesars.” (The Washington Post Book World)

“Seductively readable... It is a staggeringly ambitious undertaking that is fully matched by Halberstam’s performance.... This is in all ways an admirable and necessary book.” (Newsweek)

“A story every American should read.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Reviewer: Digital Rights
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Great Read and Important History - 6 stars!
Review: Like other reviewers I had this on my bookshelf for 20 years or more. Even 40 to 50 years after the fact the American involvement in Vietnam is very hard to understand and accept. I have to say that this book totally lives up to its billing. Despite its length there is tremendous pace and drama throughout. It was very hard to put it down. Mr. Halberstam is a great writer and historian.Halberstam profiles the leading military and political figures in rich detail. Each person; Johnson, McNamara, Bundy, Taylor, Westmoreland and so many others are truly three dimensional. He overlaps with the events of the day on the war front and at home to really give the reader a fuller experience than most history books. It is so fresh, alive and virile even today. Considering he published this in 1970 or 1971 without the benefit of more perspective I think it is amazing how spot on he was in his reporting, observations and conclusions. I would give this six stars if I could - both an important history lesson and one of the most engrossing books that I have ever read.Incidentally I read this just after "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. You can't escape that sad reality of how we blew our position in the world in such a short period of time. The arc of American history from 1940 to 1970 is one of ascendency to superpower from humble, inward roots. In only 30 years we squandered a great deal and our position on the planet with arrogance, poor decisions, stubbornness, a lack of vision and weak leadership. Sadly 1990 to 2010 seems to be an echo of that prior period reflecting our inability to learn anything and dooming us to repeating our mistakes.I really hope this continues to be read widely. Maybe it will inspire the the best of the next generation to politics or to write a great book!

Reviewer: Tetsu
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A number of similarities with Iraq 40 years later.
Review: I read this book when it was first published and then found it to be an excellent description of the failures of the Kennedy-Johnson administration as it incrementally entered a war with North Vietnam. I have read it again after I read of Mr. Halberstam's death a few weeks ago.I had been very bothered by the actions of the US in Iraq. After reading The Best and Brightest I know what was bothering me. It is a repeat although with different characters, different enemies, different locale but the same thinking process and lack of thought for the many "what ifs" that war produces. It would have been nice if a few of the planners of the Iraq fiasco could have read Halberstam's book and taken note of the mistakes that were made in 1963 before launching the war in Iraq in 2003.Halberstam quotes Henry Kissenger as saying something to the effect of "we won't make the same mistakes . . . we'll make our own mistakes." It looks like the current planners and executors of Iraq strategy are making the same ones that were made in 1963 - and learning the same lessons about a counterinsurgency war being fought with traditional troops, equipment and strategy.The Iraqi insurgency in Iraq will go the same way as the insurgency in Vietnam - they will wait us out but without the large scale battles that took place in Vietnam once the army of North Vietnam entered the action in large numbers.Vietnam was disaster and tragedy for the Vietnamese as well as the Americans. What seems to be preventing the same level of disaster in the US is the fact that this war is being fought by non-draftees. That is one dissimilarity with Vietnam which has prevented the large scale protests across the nation which were seen as the presidency of Lyndon Johnson unraveled.I recommend this book to all students of political and military strategy. It is an exceptional read and I would predict you won't come away angry - just saddened that so much talent brought forth so little in the way of return for Vietnam and the United States.

Reviewer: ELECTRIC EARL
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Thorough history (though full of parenthetical interruptions) of the Viet Nam War
Review: Overall, a very thorough history of how America got into the Viet Nam War. [The Vietnamese language is based on Chinese, which is all one-syllable words. "Vietnam" is an Americanization.] My main complaint about this book is the repeated interruptions in the middle of a sentence for a sentence-long parenthetical comment. I've never seen this in a book before, and hope I never will again. I don't understand how the editor let the author get away with that stuff. I also can't imagine how such a text could work as an audio book - the narrator speaking half a sentence, then a very long parenthetical comment, followed by the rest of the original sentence. No no no! I do, however, give the publisher credit for the Kindle edition being remarkably free of OCR errors, something that is very common in older books of this kind. The only thing I noticed was "naïve" repeatedly appearing as "naÏve" - something that might simply be because of limitations in the fonts available in Kindle. Another Kindle oddity is the equivalent page numbers don't match the percent tally. Once you get to around 91%, it says "Page 695 of 695." You'd expect that to be the end of the main body of the text, and the remainder would be bibliography, acknowledgments, notes, index, etc. But no, there's a very long "Epilogue." At the end of that section, a screen pops up where you can rate the book. But you haven't finished reading the book yet. If you wipe that off your screen, there comes "A Final Word," followed by "Author's Note," "Dedication" and "Bibliography." At last you've reached the end. NOW is where the book rating screen should pop up.

Reviewer: AB
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Finally reading this. Love it.

Reviewer: Thomé Madeira
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: When the best and the brightest gather , we expect the finest , but sometimes the results are less than pity... that is what I've seen , in the greatest and dreadful mistake in American History

Reviewer: Mr J OBrien
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: As I write this review, the Taliban have entered Kabul with little apparent resistance. 20 years after going in after 9/11, all guns and modern technology blazing, the modern armies the the west (principally the USA) are staring ignominious defeat in the face, once again to a 3rd World rag-tag force. Eerily, the situation in Afghanistan looks like the fall of Saigon all over again.This book describes brilliantly how a group of exceptionally talented individuals at the highest level of the US government got Vietnam so terribly wrong. Intelligence, however, is not everything. As these individuals took power after Kennedy’s election in 1960, they looked an impressive bunch. However, as one seasoned political hack observed, he would have felt much happier if they had “ever actually run something”. Intelligence brings baggage with it, namely arrogance and hubris. LBJ decided, after JFKs death, to keep the ‘best and the brightest’ in place. This would prove a pivotal decision.This book analyses the fundamental mistakes made as the Vietnam conflict escalated. The Democrats, wounded by the apparent charge that they had ‘lost China’ a decade before, were terrified that they would forever be seen as weak in the face of communism. This fear helped shape their future decisions.Their strategy was based on a number of flawed assumptions. Firstly, that a 3rd world army was no match for a modern one, that AirPower was decisive, the South Vietnamese government would get better and win local support, and that in the short term Ho Chi Minh would be forced to negotiate. Lets consider each in turn.The Generals were trained and had experience of fighting conventional European style wars. The Vietcong could just melt away, strike at will and then disappear. Hanoi could also reinforce battalions with ease and send them down the Ho Chi Minh trail. The US, thousands of miles from home, had Congress and the public to deal with. Also, Ho Chi Minh was fighting for an idea- they were in it to change their country. The southern government was corrupt, repressive and unpopular, with coups a normal occurrence. No wonder the natives flocked to Ho Chi Minh. The ‘best’ also had a condescending view of the Vietnamese- surely these people, simple as they are, will see what we are doing for them? However, this book explains that the conflict owes at least as much to Nationalism as it did to Communism. The French Indo-China war had done for the colonial power, enhancing the growing sense of Vietnamese nationhood, which was further developed by subsequent US involvement. The fact that the French, a decent army, was beaten should have sounded alarm bells for the US, but again this apparent contempt for all this not American seems incredible in retrospect. AirPower alone, was never enough to force Hanoi, fighting in their own backyard and knowledgable of the terrain, able to replenish losses at will, to the negotiating table. It was a fantasy. The author describes Vietnam as a ‘tar-baby’ the more you struggle the more you get stuck.Finally, the US simply underestimated Ho Chi Minh as an adversary. Also, the book describes how the ‘reports’ that reached the desks of the Pentagon were always hopelessness optimistic - a lesson to all about the dangers of subordinates telling you what you want to hear rather than the truth.The best and the brightest is a seminal work that everyone who aspires to office should read. What’s clear is how few people appear to have done so.One haunting section has proven to be eerily prescient as the Talibon, today, enter Kabul with little apparent resistance. In the mid 60’s Robert McNamara was asked by a question by a subordinate. What, he asked, was to stop the Vietcong just waiting for the day when inevitably we would have to go home? Would they not just take over? McNamara paused, and replied that he had not thought of that. And so in 2021, over 40 years since the fall of Saigon, we see the exact same playing out again in Kabul.The Best and the Brightest is an important lesson for all of those who believe to much in themselves.

Reviewer: Charles de Talhouet
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: excellent

Reviewer: Oscar Puerto
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Un detalladisimo ensayo de como los hombres mas brillantes y mejores pudieron llevar a Estados Unidos a perder una guerra. Muy recomendable.