The Best and the Brightest | 
| Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 6380
Media: Paperback
Edition: 20 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 720
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0449908704
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.922
EAN: 9780449908709
ASIN: 0449908704
Publication Date: October 26, 1993
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Condition: Different Edition
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Product Description
"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience." -- The New York Times
"[The] most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam. It is also the Iliad of the American empire and the Odyssey of this nation's search for its idealistic soul. THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST is almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller." -- The Boston Globe
"Deeply moving . . . We cannot help but feel the compelling power of this narrative . . . . Dramatic and tragic, a chain of events overwhelming in their force, a distant war embodying illusions and myths, terror and violence, confusions and courage, blindness, pride, and arrogance." -- Los Angeles Times
"Most impressive, superb -- perceptive, literary, multidimensional." -- The New York Times Book Review
"A story which every American should read." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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| Customer Reviews: Read 53 more reviews...
 The Best and the Brightest June 19, 2008
An excellent review of the origins and causes of the Vietnam conflict and a must read for the serious historian to understand the liberal, leftist viewpoint. To be fair in one's analysis however, the author's views need to be contrasted to a viewpoint from the right. A good comparative work is Vietnam at War: The History 1946-1975 by Phillip Davidson. Some where in between the views of these authors probably lies the truth.
 The people behind the war June 6, 2008
The author tells us about the Vietnam War. This book is not about the battles or the people in the front lines, but about the people behind the war. Primarily he covers the American political actions that help create and expand the war. The book was completed in the early 1970s, so the war had not ended yet. The Pentagon Papers had been published, and the author uses them to good effect to solidify the understanding of the process put forth in the book.
There's a lot of good information in the book, with many short biographies of significant people in the decisions (as well as some with seemingly peripheral connections). While the general flow of the book is linear with respect to time, the continual interruption of the flow by the biographies (which go back and forth in time without regard to the general flow of the book) is somewhat annoying. The primary source for the book is a large number of interviews the author did with many of the people directly involved in the decisions.
If you enjoy books about politics, or the back office "whys" about how large enterprises come to pass, you will like this book.
 The Best and the Brightest May 11, 2008
This is an important book for anyone interested in how the US became inextricably involved in Vietnam. It holds pertinent lessons for the predicament in which the US now finds itself in Iraq. Unfortunately, the book requires a determined reader to plow through some 650 pages of close-spaced narrative, as the author frequently diverges on tangents that drift away from his main thesis points. A principal thrust of the book is the influence of key players on the decision-making process and their inter-personal relationships. Accordingly, there is substantial biographical information, which is interesting, but distracting. This is not a military history; very little mention is made of the operational and tactical aspects of the conflict.
History repeating itself March 23, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read this book for the first time over ten years ago and returned to it for the bitter relevancy it has as I reflect on our situation in Iraq today.
Poor deluded SOBs February 6, 2008
Despite the logorrhea, the fragments, the absolute structures, and the never-ending repetition, this book is worthwhile as the explication of a man who surrounded himself with sycophants. Americans, in general, paid a high price.
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