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dunguyen 's review for:
The Best and the Brightest
by David Halberstam
The Best and the Brightest cover the term given to the cabinet of JFK. The title is used ironically as David Halberstam, famous as a journalist during the Vietnam War Era in the US, uses the entire long book analyzing the decisions of the "best and brightest" cabinet and to show how Vietnam ended being a disaster.
The book was written in 1972 so it's right after the Pentagon Papers which showed how the Johnson administration lied to the public about the Vietnam War but before the Nixon Watergate scandal. It's a really long book that starts from the very beginning and by the very beginning, I mean the Second World War and the independence movements that started right after. Halberstam goes into detail of the American strategy for Vietnam. Then he gets into the meat of it by providing a biography of every single person in the administration of JFK and the key players in what was then the Vietnam conflict. He covers the personalities of people like JFK, McNamara, Westmoreland and the battle between the hawks and doves who would push and pull the US towards direct intervention in Vietnam. It's a good book and a very long one too! The portrayals of the key players are very fascinating and while I think Halberstam could have condensed it a lot, the length and breadth does add to an overall image of the various people.
I can't really recommend it as it requires a lot of mental effort to read. This book was written as a passion project of Halberstam's and he is not really being objective at all. Written while the war was still ongoing it does not have enough distance to really be a good history book and is more of a source for a history book. Overall interesting and should be read critically.
The book was written in 1972 so it's right after the Pentagon Papers which showed how the Johnson administration lied to the public about the Vietnam War but before the Nixon Watergate scandal. It's a really long book that starts from the very beginning and by the very beginning, I mean the Second World War and the independence movements that started right after. Halberstam goes into detail of the American strategy for Vietnam. Then he gets into the meat of it by providing a biography of every single person in the administration of JFK and the key players in what was then the Vietnam conflict. He covers the personalities of people like JFK, McNamara, Westmoreland and the battle between the hawks and doves who would push and pull the US towards direct intervention in Vietnam. It's a good book and a very long one too! The portrayals of the key players are very fascinating and while I think Halberstam could have condensed it a lot, the length and breadth does add to an overall image of the various people.
I can't really recommend it as it requires a lot of mental effort to read. This book was written as a passion project of Halberstam's and he is not really being objective at all. Written while the war was still ongoing it does not have enough distance to really be a good history book and is more of a source for a history book. Overall interesting and should be read critically.