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puhnner's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
5.0
adamskiboy528491's review against another edition
4.0
A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan is the definitive account of the Vietnam War. Sheehan was one of the top reporters of his generation, along with David Halberstam, Peter Arnett, Stanley Karnow, and Morley Safer. Neil Sheehan's classic about the life and times of John Paul Vann is the perfect metaphor for the American experience of the Vietnam War. His detailed account of battles (with the NVA/Viet Cong and within the Army) and life between those battles yield texture and substance for the reader. It may be a workload, given that it's 900 pages, but it was one of many most significant conflicts in the 20th century, so we'll give it a little leeway.
amattin's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: War and Child death
tittypete's review against another edition
3.0
The book opens telling us that John Paul Vann was a gung-ho ‘merica guy that really thought the war in Viet Nam was a righteous endeavor. But we also know that he’s dead from it because the opening chapter is called funeral and there’s a who’s who of US foreign fuckery big wigs watching his casket drop. His kids are there and some of them are pissed and shitty about the whole thing.
Then the book goes into Vann getting to Vietnam and and trying to advise the ARVN and them being pretty shitty and risk averse especially his counter part, this guy named CAO. At this point ‘merica had a bunch of overseas military bases spanning the globe and was kind of a modern-styled empire. This was sort of the mid point of our desire to be World Police it seems.
Part three gives us background on the setting. Vietnam has been pretty much fighting for its independence from outside influence since the get go. It started with Ming Chinese coming south after their shit got overthrown by the Manchus. Then there were the french who came in and put minorities in charge while they set up plantations. The Vietnamese got sick of this shit and started fighting them off. Ho Chi Minh wanted the west to recognize that Vietnam should be able to determine itself but the US was like nah, lil brown guy, self-determinism is for the whites. So I he turned commie and vowed to fuck with the installed puppet regime of the Diems and their friends. I think this is what happened anyway.
The battle of ap bac or some shit happens next. Vann is there, advising. The Viet Cong (formerly Viet Minh) shoot down a bunch of choppers and the war ceases to be a fun adventure anymore. A kid in New Jersey gets to see his dad in action because it’s the first TV war, later he also gets to find out his dad is dead. Stinkaroo. Ap Bac is a shit show because the US-supported south Vietnamese are worst army ever. They’re super pussies because they are afraid that if anybody dies fighting the Viet Cong then there will be a coup on the Diems. US starts realizing that if you want shit done you have to do it yourself. It’s hard to get people jazzed to fight a war on your behalf. Even harder to get them to want to die doing it. There’s this US guy named Harkins and he’s an idiot. He’s super optimistic but kinda has his head buried in the sand at the same time. He is dumb enough to believe what his ARVN guys are telling him and only reports back positive shit. Even when everything’s turning to crap and Vann is pissed. Harkin kinda fucks him over when he tries to be real about the shit that’s going down. He gets shipped back stateside.
The ruling family is pissing people off. There’s an incident in Hue where some kids get killed and the government forbids flying the buddhist flag. Homeboy from the Rage Against the Machine album cover sets himself on fire and the pissed off buddhist become a rallying point for everybody’s grievances in the south. They sound like a bunch of spoiled assholes. They didn’t like David Halberstram because he was trying to tell the dang truth. Harkin and the CIA gave a bunch guns to people who didn’t really want to fight for the Diem or Dinh family and like 200,000 of them ended up in the hands of the VC.
Part five or whatnot tell the reader about how Vann’s ma was a whore and pretty much sucked as a person. His stepdad was a total cuck beta simp. Vann was scrappy and some guy who pedo-diddled him paid for him to go to college. He joined the military and went to Korea. America was super over confident that the Chinese weren’t going to fight and so they acted like idiots. The US’s greatest enemy in all wars since WWII seems to be a complete lack of forsight combined with retard-level hubris. Vann meets this guy Puckett and is jealous of him. Puckett gets his foot almost blown off in a big fight but kick a lot of Chinese ass. Later in Vietnam Vann would steal the guy’s story and tell it as his own because it seems like maybe he kinda sucks. Turns out due to the diddling and his ma being a whore Vann is a diehard pussy hound. His wife knows it and is pissed. He started off by banging his Japanese maid then shifted to American strange once he was back stateside after Korea. He gets accused of statutory rape but gets away with it by beating the lie detector test.
Vann goes back to Vietnam to help figure out a winning strategy but it’s a shitshow. The Vietnamese are super corrupt and nothing can get done. He ends up building schools for commies and working the smile train to fix hairlips. He fucks A LOT of Vietnamese women. He becomes buds with Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers guy.
The book starts ending with a general overview of the quagmire we created. Now there are US troops there. Westmoreland thinks a war of attrition is the way to go but it’s not working. We’re spending a fuck ton of money and lives to attack bunkers that nobody’s in and won’t blow up. We’re pissing everybody off and the VC are hauling all kinds of commie shit down the Ho Chi Minh trail from Russia and China and we’re just throwing money and teenagers at it like it means something. Everyone in charge is a fucking retard concerned with their own career and hopped up on American exceptionalism. It’s fucking stupid. McNamara sums it up: “The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.” Fucking A. Vann tells Nixon, it’s waste to throw Americans at an Asian problem and it’d be better to let the Vietnamese do the job because they’re cheaper. He “loses his compass” and no longer cares about/tells the truth of the war and has corrupt guys doing his bidding. He starts feeling good about fibbing that the war was going well. And he’s still crushin’ puss. Knocking up a young Vietnamese girl a couple times. Dude escaped death a bunch of times and then dies crashing into some trees in a helicopter.
The main thing seems to be that this guy got in trouble and almost lost his career when he was honest about the war but became a success once he started telling people what they wanted to hear. The whole endeavor was one of bureaucratic delusion and the everyday Vietnamese person paid the price for it.
Then the book goes into Vann getting to Vietnam and and trying to advise the ARVN and them being pretty shitty and risk averse especially his counter part, this guy named CAO. At this point ‘merica had a bunch of overseas military bases spanning the globe and was kind of a modern-styled empire. This was sort of the mid point of our desire to be World Police it seems.
Part three gives us background on the setting. Vietnam has been pretty much fighting for its independence from outside influence since the get go. It started with Ming Chinese coming south after their shit got overthrown by the Manchus. Then there were the french who came in and put minorities in charge while they set up plantations. The Vietnamese got sick of this shit and started fighting them off. Ho Chi Minh wanted the west to recognize that Vietnam should be able to determine itself but the US was like nah, lil brown guy, self-determinism is for the whites. So I he turned commie and vowed to fuck with the installed puppet regime of the Diems and their friends. I think this is what happened anyway.
The battle of ap bac or some shit happens next. Vann is there, advising. The Viet Cong (formerly Viet Minh) shoot down a bunch of choppers and the war ceases to be a fun adventure anymore. A kid in New Jersey gets to see his dad in action because it’s the first TV war, later he also gets to find out his dad is dead. Stinkaroo. Ap Bac is a shit show because the US-supported south Vietnamese are worst army ever. They’re super pussies because they are afraid that if anybody dies fighting the Viet Cong then there will be a coup on the Diems. US starts realizing that if you want shit done you have to do it yourself. It’s hard to get people jazzed to fight a war on your behalf. Even harder to get them to want to die doing it. There’s this US guy named Harkins and he’s an idiot. He’s super optimistic but kinda has his head buried in the sand at the same time. He is dumb enough to believe what his ARVN guys are telling him and only reports back positive shit. Even when everything’s turning to crap and Vann is pissed. Harkin kinda fucks him over when he tries to be real about the shit that’s going down. He gets shipped back stateside.
The ruling family is pissing people off. There’s an incident in Hue where some kids get killed and the government forbids flying the buddhist flag. Homeboy from the Rage Against the Machine album cover sets himself on fire and the pissed off buddhist become a rallying point for everybody’s grievances in the south. They sound like a bunch of spoiled assholes. They didn’t like David Halberstram because he was trying to tell the dang truth. Harkin and the CIA gave a bunch guns to people who didn’t really want to fight for the Diem or Dinh family and like 200,000 of them ended up in the hands of the VC.
Part five or whatnot tell the reader about how Vann’s ma was a whore and pretty much sucked as a person. His stepdad was a total cuck beta simp. Vann was scrappy and some guy who pedo-diddled him paid for him to go to college. He joined the military and went to Korea. America was super over confident that the Chinese weren’t going to fight and so they acted like idiots. The US’s greatest enemy in all wars since WWII seems to be a complete lack of forsight combined with retard-level hubris. Vann meets this guy Puckett and is jealous of him. Puckett gets his foot almost blown off in a big fight but kick a lot of Chinese ass. Later in Vietnam Vann would steal the guy’s story and tell it as his own because it seems like maybe he kinda sucks. Turns out due to the diddling and his ma being a whore Vann is a diehard pussy hound. His wife knows it and is pissed. He started off by banging his Japanese maid then shifted to American strange once he was back stateside after Korea. He gets accused of statutory rape but gets away with it by beating the lie detector test.
Vann goes back to Vietnam to help figure out a winning strategy but it’s a shitshow. The Vietnamese are super corrupt and nothing can get done. He ends up building schools for commies and working the smile train to fix hairlips. He fucks A LOT of Vietnamese women. He becomes buds with Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers guy.
The book starts ending with a general overview of the quagmire we created. Now there are US troops there. Westmoreland thinks a war of attrition is the way to go but it’s not working. We’re spending a fuck ton of money and lives to attack bunkers that nobody’s in and won’t blow up. We’re pissing everybody off and the VC are hauling all kinds of commie shit down the Ho Chi Minh trail from Russia and China and we’re just throwing money and teenagers at it like it means something. Everyone in charge is a fucking retard concerned with their own career and hopped up on American exceptionalism. It’s fucking stupid. McNamara sums it up: “The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.” Fucking A. Vann tells Nixon, it’s waste to throw Americans at an Asian problem and it’d be better to let the Vietnamese do the job because they’re cheaper. He “loses his compass” and no longer cares about/tells the truth of the war and has corrupt guys doing his bidding. He starts feeling good about fibbing that the war was going well. And he’s still crushin’ puss. Knocking up a young Vietnamese girl a couple times. Dude escaped death a bunch of times and then dies crashing into some trees in a helicopter.
The main thing seems to be that this guy got in trouble and almost lost his career when he was honest about the war but became a success once he started telling people what they wanted to hear. The whole endeavor was one of bureaucratic delusion and the everyday Vietnamese person paid the price for it.
slc54hiwi's review against another edition
5.0
Time for a re-read of this book which I consider to be the best single study/history of the US war in VietNam.
eowyns_helmet's review against another edition
4.0
Still a great book, but reading now reveals a fair amount of misogyny, as women are described as "still pretty enough to attract a man," etc., barf.
glennmiller5309's review
5.0
This book is considered the definitive account of the Vietnam War, and for good reason. Sheehan was one of the top reporters of his generation, along with David Halberstam, Peter Arnett, Stanley Karnow, and Morley Safer. It was Sheehan's breaking of the Pentagon Papers that, arguably, sealed his reputation among the highest echelon of reporters of his generation. In A Bright Shining Lie, Sheehan brings the complexities of the war down to one single man -- John Vann. And while Vann, early on, was the truth teller of the war, his length of time in the country and his overwhelming desire to, seemingly, singlehandedly win the war ultimately made him an apologist for America's involvement. Sheehan beautifully captures Vann's personal development and America's evolving stance on the war. Vann was not necessarily a likeable person -- he had numerous flaws -- and it is to Sheehan's credit that he reveals all aspects of Vann's less-than-exemplary life. Any reporter of the history of a war must decide on the level of detail that is to be included -- is the book aimed at the lay person or at the military historian? Sheehan effectively walks this line, with only the occasional clunker of a sentence such as: "Vann did not have to shift his office from the former OCO compound near ARVN III Corps headquarters on the outskirts of Bien Hoa when he became the Dep/CORDS for II Field Force in June 1967." So noted. With the rare exception, Sheehan stays high enough above such details for a riveting and expansive account of this divisive war.
alibi313's review against another edition
2.0
While the personal and political stories were interesting, the majority of the book focused on endless descriptions of battles, which don't interest me in the slightest. Overall, eye-glazingly boring for someone who's not an aficionado of The History Channel and its ilk.