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A review by gregbrown
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
5.0
Outstanding group biography of the members of the Kennedy (and later Johnson) administration involved in the run up in the Vietnam War.
It's not the first book you should read on the war—only really covering the administration's internal perspective, and even then only written from the view of 1972—but it's still one of the best books to understand what happened. Halberstam builds up a picture of the Establishment of the era, and the ways that liberals at the time acceded to a picture of China and Communism that ended up backfiring spectacularly.
Since the book focuses on the internal decision-making dynamics at play, I would say it overrates those specifics as the cause of entry and escalation into Vietnam. Young's The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 lays out a much more complete picture of the war, and lays out a case that the larger ideological framework (and severe misunderstandings of vietcong political economy) of the US at the time made war inevitable. It's also why I underrate speculation that Kennedy would have backed out of Vietnam.
I really, really hope Caro is able to finish the last LBJ volume properly—because some of the shit he pulled was WILD. Take, for example, the polarity flip from "I can't be seen as backing down on the war because they'll think I'm weak and take away my Great Society," to "I can't be seen as escalating too much on the war because they'll think I'm expensive and take away my Great Society."
It's not the first book you should read on the war—only really covering the administration's internal perspective, and even then only written from the view of 1972—but it's still one of the best books to understand what happened. Halberstam builds up a picture of the Establishment of the era, and the ways that liberals at the time acceded to a picture of China and Communism that ended up backfiring spectacularly.
Since the book focuses on the internal decision-making dynamics at play, I would say it overrates those specifics as the cause of entry and escalation into Vietnam. Young's The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 lays out a much more complete picture of the war, and lays out a case that the larger ideological framework (and severe misunderstandings of vietcong political economy) of the US at the time made war inevitable. It's also why I underrate speculation that Kennedy would have backed out of Vietnam.
I really, really hope Caro is able to finish the last LBJ volume properly—because some of the shit he pulled was WILD. Take, for example, the polarity flip from "I can't be seen as backing down on the war because they'll think I'm weak and take away my Great Society," to "I can't be seen as escalating too much on the war because they'll think I'm expensive and take away my Great Society."