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Rating: 
Summary: Great literary style. Hendrickson did a fine job!
Review: Being one of the few books that I have read on the Vietnam war, I must commend Hendrickson for taking his time to research and exhaust all possible avenues before putting it into print. I have not read McNamara's book In Retrospect, but it is ordered. I need to read his story and see if that confused individual lives in this book. We may never have the entire truth as to why an event like this had taken place. But if reporters could be wonderful like Hendrickson, and can investigate the issues, maybe with some good fortune we can learn a valuable lesson.
Rating:
Summary: Descent into Obsession
Review: For those too young to remember the Vietnam conflict, author Hendrickson has provided a valuable service. This finely etched book details the bizarrely detached way that one of the war's founders approached his bloody work; he viewed it as a math problem. And Hendrickson goes farther, illustrating the tragic ways McNamara's death-dealing equations affected specific human lives. It is precisely that detachment -- a certain soulless vacancy which corrupted America's conduct of the war and prevented us from either winning or leaving -- that threatened to drive America mad. I have read no better book on the American obsession that was the Vietnam War. In 1963, nobody knew where Vietnam was. Now, more than 25 years after we left, many of us cannot forget. I cried more than once when I read this book the first time -- for those whose stories are told here, for the men I knew who died without ever having experienced the love of wives or children, for my country and for myself. I have read it twice since. It has, I am sorry to say, lost no degree of impact.
Rating: 
Summary: Who edits, who censors?
Review: Hendrickson's unusual book succeeds on many levels. Its a fascinating biography and portrayal of the flawed Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. It also portrays five other figures from the war; the Quaker who immolated himself outside McNamara's window, an Army nurse and an Army private, a Vietnamese family, and the man who tried to throw McNamara off a boat near Martha's Vineyard. While each of these portrayals has some merit and interest, the author's attempt to make cosmic connections between them only seems to trivialize each of them in the broader picture. The book is at its best when it focuses strictly on McNamara and his"crime of silence" in not speaking more forcefully against the war while in office and after he left office. The author leaves little doubt that McNamara told outright lies to Congress and the public. While I am sympathetic to the fact that any public figure and especially Executive Branch bureaucrats must often defend views or policies that are counter to their own, McNamara clearly tried to play both sides of the fence, i.e. be for or against the war, depending on the situation or who was listening. He may have been a brilliant number cruncher, but he never got the meanings of the numbers themselves or saw the bigger picture until it was too late. Even if he did, and he may have, he did litle about it until his own book was published, a book that comes across according to the author (and this reviewer) as a short apology and then a massive rationalization. All in all its a fascinating and well-written book, but much of its biographical focus on others besides McNamara borders on the trivial. I can understand and appreciate the authors wish to document how the war and McNamara affected some people, but if that is what you are looking for I suggest you read one of the fine oral histories written by Vietnam vets. For this reason the book is not a significant contribution to the literature on the war and its aftermath, though its worth reading for its focus on McNamara.
Rating:
Summary: gripping book
Review: I read the hardback version of this book several years ago when it first came out. I've probably read about 20 books on the Vietnam war, including the Pentagon Papers. I'm well steeped in the literature - and this is one of the best books on the war. I only read it once a few years ago and some of the passages and scenes in the book are still in my mind. Who can forget the Veteran who saw McNamara on the boat near Martha's Vineyard? Or McNamara's breakdown at his go away dinner. Or his realization that the war was unwinnable after the first major engaement of combat troops?
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Start
Review: I was moved to read this book when I saw the author on C-SPAN's "Booknotes" program a few years ago. I immediately bought the book on the basis of this interview and I wasn't disappointed. As one other reviewer here has stated - Who can forget the incident on the Martha's Vineyard ferry? The opening of the book is like that of a thriller; it entices you and pulls you into the story immediately. And what a thriller! This was a defining period of my life. The Vietnam War and its affect on the young people of the United States, of whom I was one, has seldom been written about so personally and with such fervor. Hendrikson brilliantly revives the feelings of those of us here at home about the unwinnable war and the waste of lives - both of our own people and (in even larger numbers) the Vietnamese. I remember the self-immolation of the Quaker man at the Pentagon. This horrific event was described by the press at the time as the act of a madman. But it was one of the purest acts of contrition on behalf of humanity in my young experience and is rendered in this book with compassion and and enlightenment. For those who are too young to remember the Vietnam War, the demonstrations and other efforts against it, and the personal cost for ALL - both those in the killing fields and those here at home - I say to you: READ THIS BOOK.
Rating: 
Summary: Well researched, badly written
Review: I was so put off by the writer's suffocating style that I could not complete it. The best thing I can say about this book is that it is well researched, but I have to wonder if it was not just too well researched. Do we need all this detail about both McNamara's maternal and paternal antecedents and those of his wife and ex-girlfriend? The author is way too much in love with irritating literary devices such as his use of nouns when pronouns or proper names would suffice ("a secretary of defense and a Quaker" instead of "McNamara and Morrison"). Once or twice and it's clever, but these devices are used continuously throughout the book. The work would have been better and more readable had it been half as long.
Rating:
Summary: A fair shake for McNamara
Review: If you're familiar with Robert McNamara, you probably know that many people have some very strong feelings about the man. This includes many of the other authors who have written about the former secretary of defense. Hendrickson has managed to restore an aspect of humanity to the former secretary, and do so without making apologies for him. This is not an easy trick If you're familiar with the usual indictments against McNamara (He's a liar, he knew the war was unwinable but kept it going for years, he's an evil robot of a man that enjoys dropping bombs on villages, etc...) this book should be of help to you in making sense of a complicated man, and might even help you to understand him to some degree. Along with his narrative of the trials and tribulations of Robert Strange McNamara, Hendrickson tells the tales of a handful of divergent figures involved in a variety of ways with the American War in Vietnam. If you're particularly interested in this war, you'll probably recognize the tale of a conscientious objector that gave the last full measure of devotion outside McNamara's Pentagon window. The other individuals are most likely strangers to pretty much anyone, but their stories serve to enliven the narrative, and are interesting in and of themselves. Like the author, I'm not apologizing for McNamara. However, I think the man has been burned in effigy long enough, and if you still insist on hating him, you ought to at least try to understand the position he was in. 9 out of 10 McNamara haters do not. I'm not saying that McNamara did the right thing, or making any form of value judgement on the war, but I do believe that he takes an inordinate amount of the blame for the disaster in Indochina, and it's about time someone presented a reasonably fair picture of Mr. McNamara. Hendrickson gives you both sides to the McNamara coin. He calls him on a number of apparent(and a few obvious) lies, yet he also plays devil's advocate rather well. His discussion of whether or not McNamara should have resigned when he lost faith is an excellent example of fairness in journalism. He doesn't judge him on this, but he presents the alternatives, as they must have appeared to McNamara in the mid 60s, and lets the reader decide. After you know where McNamara came from, and try to imagine what his experiences prior to becoming SecDef had taught him, you are free to throw stones. I have a strong feeling you might still be inclined to. However, I think you might be a bit less inclined to fault him for certain things, and a bit more knowledgeable about a certain war in Southeast Asia for having read this book.
Rating:
Summary: A fair shake for McNamara
Review: If you're familiar with Robert McNamara, you probably know that many people have some very strong feelings about the man. This includes many of the other authors who have written about the former secretary of defense. Hendrickson has managed to restore an aspect of humanity to the former secretary, and do so without making apologies for him. This is not an easy trick If you're familiar with the usual indictments against McNamara (He's a liar, he knew the war was unwinable but kept it going for years, he's an evil robot of a man that enjoys dropping bombs on villages, etc...) this book should be of help to you in making sense of a complicated man, and might even help you to understand him to some degree. Along with his narrative of the trials and tribulations of Robert Strange McNamara, Hendrickson tells the tales of a handful of divergent figures involved in a variety of ways with the American War in Vietnam. If you're particularly interested in this war, you'll probably recognize the tale of a conscientious objector that gave the last full measure of devotion outside McNamara's Pentagon window. The other individuals are most likely strangers to pretty much anyone, but their stories serve to enliven the narrative, and are interesting in and of themselves. Like the author, I'm not apologizing for McNamara. However, I think the man has been burned in effigy long enough, and if you still insist on hating him, you ought to at least try to understand the position he was in. 9 out of 10 McNamara haters do not. I'm not saying that McNamara did the right thing, or making any form of value judgement on the war, but I do believe that he takes an inordinate amount of the blame for the disaster in Indochina, and it's about time someone presented a reasonably fair picture of Mr. McNamara. Hendrickson gives you both sides to the McNamara coin. He calls him on a number of apparent(and a few obvious) lies, yet he also plays devil's advocate rather well. His discussion of whether or not McNamara should have resigned when he lost faith is an excellent example of fairness in journalism. He doesn't judge him on this, but he presents the alternatives, as they must have appeared to McNamara in the mid 60s, and lets the reader decide. After you know where McNamara came from, and try to imagine what his experiences prior to becoming SecDef had taught him, you are free to throw stones. I have a strong feeling you might still be inclined to. However, I think you might be a bit less inclined to fault him for certain things, and a bit more knowledgeable about a certain war in Southeast Asia for having read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Scathing Indictment Of McNamara for Cowardice!
Review: This book falls squarely into the category of a wonderfully developed "best of class", for it faces the issue of Robert McNamara complicity and lasting culpability for the debacle and aftermath associated with Vietnam. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, it is only fair to mention my own antipathy for McNamara, and my own belief he (as well as Henry Kissinger and a number of notable others) should have been indicted for crimes against humanity in association with the war in Vietnam. Nonetheless, this book is truly amazing at a number of levels, but most certainly because it puts the lie to the lingering neo-conservative notion that Vietnam was a necessary and winnable war that the nattering nabobs of negativity (read liberals here) and anti-war protestors inadvertently lost for America. Of course, such nonsense has more to do with wishful thinking then it does the reality of the times, as author Paul Hendrickson quickly illustrates. This is a fascinating character study, one that poses McNamara as an isolated, antisocial figure more at home with the comfortable fictions of number crunching than with the quicksilver facts of everyday reality. His rise from Harvard to the Air Force to Ford won him wide acclaim as a "no-nonsense can-do" kind of guy, and this reputation for being the best and the brightest resulted in him being named Secretary of Defense by Jack Kennedy in what was likely the most disastrous public appointments of the last half of the 20th century. He force-fit his own conceptual perceptions onto the way the Department of Defense assessed itself and its engagements, so that quantitative measures came to supplant local experience and field judgment in the conduct of day-to-day operations in Vietnam. Thus, the most venial sorts of bean-counting by way of number of sorties, bomb tonnage dropped, and enemy body counts became the "meaningful measures of merit" (an actual term, not one I am concocting) the "whiz-kids" at the Pentagon used to determine where they stood in terms of the ultimate victory. Meanwhile, thousands of American boys, as well as countless Vietnamese of every age, sex and description were lost in so-called "collateral damage". Engaged in the circular reasoning only a true believer in quantitative reasoning could marshal, McNamara fought to maintain the perception the war was being won, even when his raging intellect knew otherwise. Yet even after he recognized the reality of the situation, this self-described man of conscience could not bring himself to do the right and honorable thing. Rather than tell the truth and expose the outrageous situation in Vietnam, he remained silent, allowing many more thousand of young Americans and Vietnamese to die. It is this failure of conscience for which he should have been prosecuted, for his willing complicity in the continuing bloodbath long after he knew the war could not be won and that our efforts there would result only in further loss of life. The book is also singular in its counter position of McNamara's evolution throughout the sixties and early seventies with five others so dramatically linked with the progress of the war in Vietnam; four Americans and a young Vietnamese citizen, all of whom were fatefully affected by McNamara's moral cowardice and abject failure to act or speak out. Most poignant for me was the story of one former Vietnam veteran turned artist who actually went berserk on a ferry when he discovered McNamara to be a fellow passenger. Finally, the author deals quite convincingly with the self-serving arguments McNamara himself has used to deflect criticism from himself, showing how one-sided and inconsistent they are with the public record. This is a terrific book, and one that provocatively revisits the painful and mind-numbing consequences that the terrible events of the sixties had for so many ordinary Americans. I recommend this book, although I must caution that reading it is hardly for the squeamish or faint of heart. It cuts deep into the heart of darkness that was so central to our venture in Vietnam, and faithfully recalls the depths of heartache and tragedy that piteous, misadventured action caused.
Rating:
Summary: A Powerful but flawed book
Review: This book packs real emotional punch along with some excellent reporting and analysis. Hendrickson has caught the basic rhythm of the Vietnam War through his account of the intertwined lives of former SecDef Robert McNamara and a young Martha's Vineyard artist, a Marine helicopter crew chief, a Quaker who burned himself to death in protest of the Vietnam war, a young Catholic who went off to become a combat nurse, and a Vietnamese family torn apart by the war and the victory of the Communists. In addition, two other characters play prominent roles, the author himself and, in a shadowy way, McNamara's son. This structure allows Hendrickson to develop considerable dramatic impact as he cuts back and forth between the events of McNamara's life, and his foolish and fateful decisions, and the lives of those who were effected by McNamara and his decisions. There is great drama and illumination in the contrast between what was happening on the ground in Vietnam, or in the lives of ordinary Americans and Vietnamese, and the remorseless but curiously blind lurching forward of the Kennedy and then Johnson/McNamara war machine. Another reviewer has noted, and disapproves of, the centrality of the Quaker Norm Morrison's self-immolation virtually under McNamara's Pentagon window. This is, in many ways, the true heart of the book. Hendrickson seems to connect best with Morrison's life, and with his surviving family. Morrison's example is also a powerful challenge to any reader to think through the practical implications of his personal beliefs. In the end, however, Hendrickson seems to miss the deepest implications of his own research. He is less good with the other lives: the marine and the nurse are portrayed as earnest but ineffectual people caught up in the horror and pity of war, the sufferings of the Tranhs and the nurse are seen as inexplicable but not, finally, very interesting. The author seems most drawn to the Morrisons, the artist, and to McNamara himself. Hendrickson then ultimately lets McNamara off the hook in a muddy and curiously vain epilogue. The inner nature of McNamara's crime, the moral cowardice that could not be more sharply contrasted with Morrison's death, has a form familiar to us from Hitler's Germany. Wehrmacht General officers refused to act against their obviously criminal commander in chief because--yes, this is true--of the oath of loyalty they had sworn to Hitler. McNamara's self-justification rests on the same avowal, the same twisted and ultimately cowardly and evil misplacement of loyalty, and Hendrickson never really probes the inhumanity lurking below McNamara's ability to do so. The reporting, which overall is excellent, on these matters belies the analysis itself, the flaws of which are sometimes concealed under the author's engaging but occasionally over-the-top rhetoric. This book remains vivid and powerful, one that points the way forward and is very rewarding in itself, but which cannot be considered, despite its many excellences, the final word on the man McNamara or his war.
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