Rating: 
Summary: All The Way With LBJ
Review: "The Best and the Brightest" is the definitive story of how the White House got up to its eyeballs in the Vietnam War before anyone noticed. By the time the more enlightened members of the Kennedy/Johnson Administrations started to question the policy - "question" being a euphemism for realizing the war was a terrible, cruel, disastrous, mistake - too many top policymakers were invested in the decision to "send the boys in." Ironically, the hands-on involvement of the two Presidents - both so talented and capable - was totally counterproductive, as Kennedy's hairy-chested anti-Communist campaign rhetoric and Johnson's "can-do" philosophy simply became part of the problem. Halberstam is expert at exposing the hubris of some of the supposed elite of the day - McGeorge Bundy a favored target, but let's not forget Walt Rostow, Dean Acheson, Robert MacNamara and Dean Rusk - all prisoners of their own perceived brilliance. "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan is the ideal companion.
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Summary: A large and superb book focused on the origins of the war
Review: A large-scale work focused on the origins of the war, this book was the first of its kind by far -- published in 1972, it was written without the benefit of the Pentagon Papers. It's also entirely unreferenced, which would be troubling except for the fact that its conclusions have mostly stood up to the test of time. The depth is impressive, one of the results of its large size; at about 400,000 words, it is larger than any Vietnam War history I know of. (Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," for example, is about 330,000 words.) Especially good are the unusually detailed portraits of the principal figures involved in the origins, including Bob McNamara, President Johnson, Dean Rusk, President Kennedy, Mac Bundy, and Max Taylor. It ends with Nixon's 1968 election.Besides being a great historical resource, this book shows the amazing degree to which the problems and deceptions surrounding Vietnam were known in the late 1960's. Although many useful Vietnam histories have been published in the last five years, they add only marginally to what was known and written by Halberstam and others thirty years ago.
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Summary: Why were we in Vietnam? Halberstam brilliantly explains
Review: Along with Michael Herr's "Dispatches" (the unsurpased grunt's-eye view of Vietnam) and Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam: A History," "The Best and the Brightest" is one of the handful of truly essential works for people who want to understand American involvement in Vietnam. Halberstam's focus is on the foreign policy-makers of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, "the best and brightest" thinkers who had come to Washington prominence in the optimistic flush of the New Frontier: Rhodes Scholar Dean Rusk; Ford Motors "whiz kid" ringleader and chief number-cruncher Robert McNamara; protean politician Lyndon Johnson. Halberstam shows, in devasting, nearly heart-wrenching detail, how bureaucratic duplicity, fear of political repurcussions, and plain old hubris conspired to set American foreign policy on its misguided course in southeast Asia. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Halberstam brilliantly details the good intentions of many of the key players and power brokers of the 60's, often through extneded biographical sketches. By broadening his sights, Halberstam doesn't lose focus, but instead lends an epic proportion to his work that previous comentators have noted--and to which Halberstam has returned in his later work, with somtimes less effecting results. The second or third time you hit one of these biographical stretches, you may think, oh no, not again; soon you'll be anticipating them with relish. Halberstam briliantly orchestrates his material into an epic tragedy. The fact that he could see so clearly into the dark, cynical heart of high-level government decision-making from such an early vantage point (1972!) only makes his achievement that much more extraordinary. Probably the best book he's written, and surely the most important.
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Summary: the best introduction to the tragedy of Vietnam
Review: As a view into the making of the Americn elite that got us into the Vietnam mess, the depth of this book is simply unsurpassed. They were so convinced of their brilliance and competence that they could not imagine they could make really big mistakes. And much of that arrogance came from Harvard and old money. What makes this book tower above the rest is the way that you get to know the major players, from McGeorge Bundy to McNamara to Lyndon Johnson. THey are real people in this book, which brims with the most vivid mini-biographies, fascinating details that make the reader - or at least me - want to dig much much deeper. The details are often incredible, such as the way that McNamara threw himself so deeply into his work that he nearly had a car accident while thinking about re-making Ford or how Bundy faked, brilliantly, having written a paper in prep school by speaking aloud. It all feeds into the portrait of a self-satisfied elite that failed. There is wisdom in the ability to doubt oneself. While one can quibble with many of Halberstams's points and assertions, as historians are now doing, this is a great place to start to learn about modern American history and government. Its lessons can stimulate a lifetime of study, which it did for me. This book made such a deep impresion on me that it changed my life. THere is no doubt that this is Halbertam's greatest work. Highest recommendation.
Rating: 
Summary: Halberstam Failed To Mention One Important Point
Review: Brilliant work. I have always recommended this book to foreigners interested in American foreign policy. Halberstam, however, forgets one important point. The Vietnam War was a "liberal" war in the Wilsonian tradition of liberal internationalism. It was concerned with state building and "making the world safe for democracy." Halberstam instead explain the Democrats initial hawkish stance toward the war as a response to congressional Republican attacke on their party as being soft on communism. In truth, it was within the North American liberal internationalist tradition to enter Vietnam and fight the war as it was fought. From the strategic hamlets to "winning the hearts and minds" it clearly was a liberal war. Conservatives were traditionally isolationist, with a more liberal, eastern section (mentioned in the book) supportive of agressive internationalism. For more thoughts on this subject see "Promised Land, Crusader State" by Walter Macdougal.
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Summary: Every American should read this book!
Review: David Halberstam has to be one of the premier writers of the 20th century because in this book, he proves an important point: to understand the future, you must first understand the past. Not only is this book an excellent resource for learning about the Viet Nam war, it is also a reminder to future generations of mistakes made in hopes of not repeating them.
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Summary: An angry book about men with good intentions
Review: David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" is a mostly angry, but occasionally sympathetic book about the can-do activists of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. I think this is one of the best books written about the Vietnam War. If you read it today, you will think about Iraq and feel very sad.
In a way, this is a book in search of a hero and there was perhaps no one in the country with more power than Kennedy to influence the way Americans saw Vietnam and Communism. He had made a speech at American University where he asked Americans and Soviets alike to reexamine their attitude towards each other, but that kind of talk was rare, and it was a speech, Halberstam suggests, that would not have happened had Kennedy not proven his toughness during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy, of course had enormous doubts about Vietnam; they were based in large part on his reading of history and his own experiences. But those doubts existed during a time of unreal pressures. The culprit is the Korean War and the fall of China to Communism. The fall of China, in particular, would have a profound effect on the American people. It would spark a great debate about who had lost China, and while there was no consensus (some believed that China was never ours to lose and that those events were beyond our control), the State Department and the Democratic Party would take most of the blame. According to Halberstam, the result of all of this was devastating. From then on, U.S. Presidents would find themselves under enormous pressure to not lose any more countries.
"If there were problems", writes Halberstam "the Administration would somehow glide around them, letting time rather than political candor or courage do the healing. It was a belief that if there were scars from the period (and both the Democratic party and the Department of State were deeply scarred), they were by now secret scars, and if there were victims, they were invisible victims. If one looked away and did not talk about them, somehow they would go away. Yet the truth was altogether different: the scars and victims were real and the McCarthy period had frozen American policies on China and Asia. The Kennedy administration would in no way come to terms with the aberrations of those policies; it had not created them, as its advocates pointed out, but it did not undo them, either."
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Summary: The best account yet written of America's entry into Vietnam
Review: David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest is the Iliad of America's doomed involvement in Vietnam, a book of audacious scope and intense human drama. Want to know why America became enmired in Vietnam, and why we lost? One could argue that there isn't a more important question to ask about any aspect of American history in the last 30 years, and Halberstam answers it as fully as it can be answered in a single narrative. Reading this book thirty years after it was published, one can't help but be struck by the extent to which Halberstam's version of events has become THE standard account; his argument is thorough, and thoroughly damning, and it is a difficult one to refute. Halberstam succeeds utterly in making palpable the forces that acted on the collection of flawed individuals who found themselves in the White House during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a cast of characters brought to life with novelistic virtuosity. To coin a cliche, if you're only going to read one Vietnam book, this is surely it
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Summary: "The Emperors Who Had No Clothes!"
Review: David Halberstam's, "The Best and the Brightest," provides an inside look at the political situation and the sociological background of our national leaders that made going to Vietnam seem a necessity. He shows how they deluded themselves on some issues and ignored others in drawing up a plan for victory that would have won against any industrialized nation in the world. It simply did not work in a small, underdeveloped country called Vietnam.
Halberstam lists the impressive educational credentials of each of the key players who led us into Vietnam. These exceptionally gifted men all agreed on the following assumptions:
1. Communism was evil.
2. The only thing the Soviets respected was force.
3. Fighting the Red threat was the right thing to do morally.
4. Failing to stand up to the Soviets would only invite more aggression. No one wanted to be another Neville Chamberlain.
5. Failing to stop the Communists in Vietnam would start the dominos falling. Where they would stop could not be predicted.
Halberstam severely indicts the military system that consistently reported, "All is well," when it was apparent that Saigon teetered on the brink of defeat. The Diem/Ngo regime had no legitimacy. No amount of American firepower could provide it. Such reports were sent because the military and political establishments in Washington demanded them. In effect, LBJ and Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara were kept blissfully ignorant of the real situation because they demanded to be. Messengers, such as John Paul Vann et al., who delivered realistic reports, were shot professionally, clearly, a recipe for disaster.
Another contributing factor was the national trauma inflicted upon America by the fall of China leading to Senator Joe McCarthy's purge of the State Department. Virtually the entire Far East Directorate was exiled or emasculated by security investigations. This left only those with conventional European backgrounds unscathed politically to formulate a strategy for a highly unconventional war in Asia. The combination of refusing to hear bad news, and applying a conventional, military strategy in an unconventional, political, war led to the quagmire that was Vietnam.
Halberstam's work provides a clear view of the thought processes of the men in the decision-making arena. By hearing only optimistic reports, they deluded themselves into thinking real progress was being made. Thus, "The Best and the Brightest," became, "The Emperors Who Had No Clothes." His research is impressive however his anti-war, anti-military bias clearly shows through. Readers should note this work was completed in 1972, at the height of the anti-war movement, in which he boasts he was a prominent member. On page 250 he calls McNamara a, "fool," and in the Author's Notes (page 671) he apologizes for not, "having been better." Thus, his title, "The Best and the Brightest," reeks of sarcasm. Read his work with this in mind
Rating:
Summary: The definitive account of our entry into Vietnam...
Review: Four and one-half stars...easy to see that although this book came out in 1972, it is the standard by which all other accounts of the Vietnam conflict are measured. I can only second some of the conclusions that other reviewers have (everything that really can be said about this book has been said...). The personal accounts of McNamara, Rusk, Bundy...etc are excellent and all encompassing. The chronology is relatively easy to follow, but Halberstam does get bogged down in details (it seemed to me) and that slowed the narrative down for me. I wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer who concluded that this book had this level of detail without the benefit of references and still tells the story authoritatively. It will take you a while to get through this, but it's worth it and you'll essentially just read re-hashes of this in most other Vietnam accounts. Highly recommended.
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