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4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
I had long read about this book but never gotten around to actually reading it. Until now. It more than lives up to its reputation, not just on insights on the military and the "best and brightest" of JFK's administration, pre-assassination, but, above all, in Halberstam's insights on LBJ. I only hope hat Robert Caro picks up from here as he finishes his multi-volumne biography of LBJ.
The future seemed so bright when John F. Kennedy was elected into office in 1960. Here was the modern man, who understood where we were going and how to get there. Look at his New Frontier, filled with capable, energetic men who could get things done. Yet this also the same team that led the US in to the absolute shitshow that was the Vietnam conflict. How did that happen?
Read this book and you'll find out.
Read this book and you'll find out.
Rose to join others at the top of my list. Awesome in scope and wonderful insight. Sending me off on tangents.
Or Harvard. Or West Point. Texas State. But the point remains: this book is about how liberal elites got us into an imperial war.
I don’t know how you write a history text better than this. It has exactly what I look for in its subject’s great works: to be good, thorough, and damning. By the end of reading this, I was relieved to be done but thoroughly exhausted at the week-long endeavor, which I was only able to finish in seven days thanks to being off of work.
Halberstam writes niche, detailed profiles of the war mongers in the Kennedy-Johnson administrations with a focus on their education and socio-cultural background. All of them are white and male, the vast majority being Ivy educated. They were the new breed of intellectuals, the post-WWII generation ready to take the order handed to them by their predecessors and mold it in their image.
The problem they faced was reality. The Vietnamese era had presented a dilemma for American foreign policy since the end of WWII. Thanks to sentiments stoked at home, anti-communism was a political necessity. Thus the domestic concern of communism made an international policy of anti-communism a requirement. Hence the concern about communism spreading from Russia, to China, to Vietnam.
Halberstam lays out clearly the many mistakes involved here: China and Russia had different communistic practices, much of the revolutionary fervor in southeast Asia was driven by nationalism. The Kennedy people knew this but because of political pressures and a toxically masculine tendency towards hawkishness, they still leaned towards armed engagement. Halberstam strongly implies that if not for the Bay of Pigs disaster, we would have been in Vietnam much, much sooner.
While Kennedy tried to take a somewhat cautious approach*, Johnson was pro-confrontation from the moment he got into office. The second half of the book covers how he pushed his own views on the Kennedy people, who were mostly hawks, preparing for an armed engagement despite the warning signs that it would not work.
This book is an exhausting read. Halberstam is a first rate scribe but there is a lot of attention to detail and some redundancy. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re curious, patient, and have time to invest. But if you are, the investment will pay off. This is a necessary work. And a sad reminder that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
I don’t know how you write a history text better than this. It has exactly what I look for in its subject’s great works: to be good, thorough, and damning. By the end of reading this, I was relieved to be done but thoroughly exhausted at the week-long endeavor, which I was only able to finish in seven days thanks to being off of work.
Halberstam writes niche, detailed profiles of the war mongers in the Kennedy-Johnson administrations with a focus on their education and socio-cultural background. All of them are white and male, the vast majority being Ivy educated. They were the new breed of intellectuals, the post-WWII generation ready to take the order handed to them by their predecessors and mold it in their image.
The problem they faced was reality. The Vietnamese era had presented a dilemma for American foreign policy since the end of WWII. Thanks to sentiments stoked at home, anti-communism was a political necessity. Thus the domestic concern of communism made an international policy of anti-communism a requirement. Hence the concern about communism spreading from Russia, to China, to Vietnam.
Halberstam lays out clearly the many mistakes involved here: China and Russia had different communistic practices, much of the revolutionary fervor in southeast Asia was driven by nationalism. The Kennedy people knew this but because of political pressures and a toxically masculine tendency towards hawkishness, they still leaned towards armed engagement. Halberstam strongly implies that if not for the Bay of Pigs disaster, we would have been in Vietnam much, much sooner.
While Kennedy tried to take a somewhat cautious approach*, Johnson was pro-confrontation from the moment he got into office. The second half of the book covers how he pushed his own views on the Kennedy people, who were mostly hawks, preparing for an armed engagement despite the warning signs that it would not work.
This book is an exhausting read. Halberstam is a first rate scribe but there is a lot of attention to detail and some redundancy. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re curious, patient, and have time to invest. But if you are, the investment will pay off. This is a necessary work. And a sad reminder that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Racial slurs, Rape
4.5/5, rounded down to 4/5.
Essential book to understanding not only the decision-making that led to the Vietnam War, but also to understanding the divisions that the 1960's produced in the country.
My only complaints stem from some of the early focus on events of the 1950's-early 1960's that have since passed from common public memory, which make the book difficult to follow for more contemporary readers.
Essential book to understanding not only the decision-making that led to the Vietnam War, but also to understanding the divisions that the 1960's produced in the country.
My only complaints stem from some of the early focus on events of the 1950's-early 1960's that have since passed from common public memory, which make the book difficult to follow for more contemporary readers.
A look at the history of the Vietnam War (up to the end of the 60s, at least) through the administrations that oversaw America's role in SE Asia during the Cold War. Although the book focuses on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the policies of Truman and Eisenhower (and in the afterward, of Nixon) don't get short shrift. It is a critical and engaging look at how the mindset and ideologies of these administrations got the U.S. into that quagmire. Very good read.
A difficult read based on the author's assumption of the readership's prior in-depth knowledge. Still, it was enlightening and horrifying and stunning.
Detailed story of the political side of America's involvement in Vietnam.