The Best and the Brightest is David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy. Using portraits of America’s flawed. IN , David Halberstam wrote a new introduction for the 20th-anniversary edition of “The Best and the Brightest,” his classic history of the. “A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.” — The New York Times “[ The] most comprehensive saga of how America became involved.

America and the Korean War See all customer images. It helped me understand more about the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq. JFK was assassinated three weeks after Halberztam. The Powers That Be. Nov 02, Carl Frankel rated it it was amazing. The details, including behind the scenes and behind the reports, are there in a readable presentation.

Those who tried to go around Harkins soon found out his support and instructions came from his friend at the top, JCS Chairman Maxwell Taylor. It is disheartening because many of these guys were so smart that they should have and probably did know better than to make the decisions they made.

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The Best and the Brightest

Men who had gone to the best schools, who had racked up acclaimed careers in industry or finance or the military, who had smoothly ascended through the toughest jungles of the American elite, were unable to conjure a victory against one of the smallest, weakest, and poorest countries in the world. Halberstam gives us the inside story brlghtest how America entrapped itself in the Viet Nam War.

I never got bogged down in brightwst and the book remained a joy to read throughout. Withoutabox Submit to Film Festivals.

Men who prided themselves on straight talk. He never even visited Viet Nam. It’s inconceivable that rational human beings can act in this way, so one must conclude that Presidents, presidential hangers-on and career soldiers can’t possibly be rational human beings, and that includes the gang of war criminals, Obama, Gates and Clinton, currently in power.

Pages with related products. No matter what your position may have been or may be, this book fully and expertly explores the American foreign policy decisions and actions that led to this war and its execution and paints a clear picture of its catalytic role in the shaping of today’s America.

Best And The Brightest

These men were all liberals, committed to the good things in life, to decency and humane values. In private, Kennedy and his hlberstam mocked colleagues who were motivated primarily by idealism or ideology. The outrage gave ammunition to Joe McCarthy and helped launch his career. But it took a group of powerful establishment business and political leaders to meet with Johnson and tell him he was destroying the country, before he relented and agreed to begin backing off the war.

Ho Chi Minh is frequently compared to George Washington; one wonders after reading this book if King George III had his own “best and brightest” ministers who advised analogous strategies like shelling Boston, propping up a puppet government in Georgia, rounding tye colonists and settling them into “strategic plantations”, or simply sending more and more redcoats.

Why did America become mired in Vietnam and why did it lose? He details the many times JFK and others who doubted the war altered their positions out of fear of being seen as hslberstam.

This book isn’t designed to give you an understanding of the war in Vietnam. View all 5 comments. One of the most distressing parts of the book is in the beginning when it shows the many opportunities for the U.

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam | All-TIME Nonfiction Books |

brightset View all 25 comments. The book is a critique of ability and intlligence over wisdom. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Interdict either North Vietnamese supplies or troops flowing South. Halberstam also observed regarding the “best and the brightest” phrase, that ” We were really assholes playing with fireworks.

He lives in New York City. Don’t have a Kindle? English Choose a language for shopping. Asian experts in the state department, who balberstam generally only guilty of being accurate, were forced from their career.

Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Now the whole nation saw the hopelessness of the war and dissent took hold across the country. Rusk comes out not much better, an antiquated player failing to adapt.