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The Best and the Brightest
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List Price: $16.95
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Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.922
EAN: 9780449908709
ISBN: 0449908704
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 720
Publication Date: 1993-10-26
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 1993-10-26
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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"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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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Stop (Vietnam) War, Make Friends, Do Business"---VC tourist
Comment: June, 1969, I arrive in Bangkok, Thailand for a 9 month TOD at
Ramasun Station---a small, high tech ASA listening post.
Barhopping in Bangkok that night before I'm to be flown to
my duty station in NE Thailand I come across some happy
Orientals who invite me to their table.
Turns out the 'Happy Orientals' say they're NVA and VC
and are taking a well deserved vacation from war.???
We talk and drink and have a good time.
One of the younger 'VC' says: "You good Joe. We friends
in Bangkok. Why not be friends in Vietnam? Stop war.
Do business. Have fun. Make love, not war."
"You not going to win in Vietnam. You take village,
then you leave, we come back, you take village, you
leave...Unless you stay in village, you going to lose.
Why your leaders make you do this?" said another older
'VC'.
Since I had a 'TOP SECRET' clearance, I reported my
conversations to my superiors before I was to leave
for Ramasun.
'Ho hum' was the attitude of the debriefing officer.
He wouldn't even let me write down my experience.???
Was this a test? Or was this so common that more
data was just extra icing.
Anyway, after 9 months in Thailand, talking with locals,
talking with fellow troopies who'd been in Vietnam,
most of us came to the conclusion that we were losing
tactically and strategically and the best thing to do
was to let Vietnam be free before more US troops were
killed in a Vietnamese War of Independence because
the longer we were there, the bigger the bloodbath
as the new nation would stabilize.
We Intel Grunts often wondered if the real 'hot poop' got to our
leaders. Reading the Pentagon Papers and Best and Brightest
tell me that they were getting the straight dope from the
field; but, just couldn't believe it and progressed with
the war as if the Vietnamese were Americans and that
we were doing God's work to stop Godless Communism, etc...
I was disgusted then and got out of the Army in 1970.
I am disgusted now that our Fearless Leaders like Bush and
friends and our moronic tactics in Iraq.
The similarities to our Vietnam are eerie.
We can have victory over the Islamic fanatics that makes
the US strong, uses fewer lives of our young, etc...but,
our leaders aren't listening.
Good read. Just solidifies my longtime beliefs.
Bill Bryan
Customer Rating:
Summary: In the end They did get it wrong!!
Comment: I read this book way back in 1974 when an old Army buddy Lt. Tom Couch told me to read it.
I am a Veteran of the War in Southeast Asia. I can attest to the happenings during my tour of South Vietnam. I quickly learned that the War as it was being played out during the years of 1971-1972 was a losing proposition. We were wasting all our assets for a Country who in truth wanted to be left alone.
Halberstam has set in cement his views of a conflict that was invented in the minds of the powers to be in Washington. LBJ was the actual catalyst in the venture. In retrospect LBJ reminds me of a fellow Texan George Bush who reacts the same way 30 years later. Think about that, it is a true comparison.
Although JFK had ventured into this Southeast Asian scenario, Halberstam feels that JFK would not have escalated this conflict. Maybe Yes, Maybe No!!
The hubris of McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara would rush LBJ into the War to end Communism in Southeast Asia. This is what LBJ wanted to hear. Damn the torpedoes, full ahead!!!!!!
In the meantime General Harkins was perpetuating a fraud on the U.S.A. in stating we controlled all the aspects of the Vietnam Conflict. He indeed did not tell the truth of the happenings in the fields of South Vietnam. We indeed were not winning.
Later General Westmorland continued this masquerade. The U.S. sent over 500,000 troops into the quagmire of Vietnam. These governing Whiz Kids in Washington were indeed wrong. So now Old Friend, please learn from this ignorance. The beat goes on. Do we ever really learn.
Halberstam understood way back in the 1960's, we also should learn that the best and the brightest really knew nothing!! They were wrong!!!
This is a great read and I rate it 5 Stars. If I could I would rate it 6 Stars. Bloody Good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best and the Brightest
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: The people behind the war
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best and the Brightest
Comment: 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.
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