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David Halberstam

The Best and the Brightest Paperback – October 26, 1993

by David Halberstam (Author)

4.5 1,435 ratings

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David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a new Foreword by Senator John McCain.

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.”—The New York Times

Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country’s recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.

Praise for The Best and the Brightest

“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

“A fascinating tale of folly and self-deception . . . [An] absorbing, detailed, and devastatingly caustic tale of Washington in the days of the Caesars.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Seductively readable . . . It is a staggeringly ambitious undertaking that is fully matched by Halberstam’s performance. . . . This is in all ways an admirable and necessary book.”—Newsweek

“A story every American should read.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Print length

720 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ballantine Books
Publication date

October 26, 1993
Dimensions

6.05 x 1.25 x 9.15 inches
ISBN-10

9780449908709
ISBN-13

978-0449908709
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The Best and the Brightest

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A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

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The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War

The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War

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Customers say

Customers find the book well-written and easy to read. They appreciate the insights it provides into the minds and thinking of key individuals involved in the Vietnam War. The history is described as fascinating and portrayed as human through an approach that makes history seem more relatable. Readers appreciate the detailed character studies and compelling descriptions of key individuals. Overall, customers describe the book as an important look at the U.S. Government during the Vietnam War. However, some feel the pacing becomes ponderous and repetitive, making it difficult to continue reading.

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Readability Insight History Character study Look Pacing Length

143 customers mention "Readability"119 positive24 negative

Customers find the book readable and well-written. They appreciate the clear, organized language and consider it an excellent work that sets a new standard for writing history.

"Good read." Read more

"...The book was NOT a page turner because it was exciting. Time is suppose to heal but Vietnam is a running sore for me...." Read more

"...with Ph.D.’s; men of keen intellect and supposed prodigious management and leadership skills. Men who prided themselves on straight talk...." Read more

"...It is an exceptional read and I would predict you won't come away angry - just saddened that so much talent brought forth so little in the way of..." Read more

96 customers mention "Insight"88 positive8 negative

Customers find the book insightful and well-researched. They appreciate its thorough coverage of the thinking and bureaucratic struggles on the US side during the Vietnam War. The book explains the mental processes of those who made key decisions. It provides an in-depth look at the politics, politicians, and events leading up to the war. Readers describe it as an important and objective account that covers many critical subplots.

"Overall, a very thorough history of how America got into the Viet Nam War...." Read more

"...there is sufficient coverage of prior decades, of the involvements of prior administrations, of the French post-war colonial experience, and of the..." Read more

"...in “The Best and the Brightest,” but I do think he made a powerful argument that seems to be largely vindicated in the four decades since the end of..." Read more

"...Despite their super-education, their impeccable character, and their natural brilliance all the principals viewed the war as a war against Communist..." Read more

55 customers mention "History"50 positive5 negative

Customers find the book fascinating and well-written. It provides an engaging overview of the Vietnam War and Kennedy years, with interesting biographies of key figures. Readers appreciate the humanistic approach that makes history seem relatable.

"...The best book on the Vietnam War remains "Fire in the Lake."" Read more

"...Through this approach, seldom has history seemed so human, the foibles of leadership easy to understand...." Read more

"I finally got around to reading this classic work, and I was both enthalled and disappointed...." Read more

"If you are looking for a good intro to Vietnam history, it is hard to miss the glowing reviews given to TBATB by David Halberstam...." Read more

14 customers mention "Character study"10 positive4 negative

Customers appreciate the detailed character studies of key individuals and their relationships. They find the descriptions insightful and compelling, especially the policy-making mechanisms described. Readers also mention that Halberstam conducted some 500 interviews.

"...Despite their super-education, their impeccable character, and their natural brilliance all the principals viewed the war as a war against Communist..." Read more

"...Rather, what is impressive is that Halberstam conducted some 500 interviews, sometimes interviewing the same subject 10 times for clarification...." Read more

"...There were too many names and too many unimportant details about people who were relatively unimportant in the Vietnam episode, as it affected our..." Read more

"...However the quotes cited, the Reports and interviews are all very compelling and the author's interpretation of them is as well...." Read more

7 customers mention "Look"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book an important look at the U.S. Government in Vietnam. They appreciate the brilliant and comprehensible research, excellent depiction of what happened and where we went wrong, and excellent background and profiles on the Kennedy and Johnson cabinets.

"Not yet finished it, but can hardly put it down. Excellent inside look at the US runup to the Vietnam War, from Truman on...." Read more

"Gets a bit dry at times, but overalll excellent background and profiles on the Kennedy/Johnson cabinets/decision makers." Read more

"this book is a national treasure, an honest unflinching look at one of the most one of the most controversial events in u.s...." Read more

"A great look at how smart and powerful people can lie to themselves to everyone's detriment. Very informative and pertinent to today's era." Read more

26 customers mention "Pacing"4 positive22 negative

Customers find the book's pacing slow and repetitive. They find the narrative difficult to follow in some parts, with too much detail on individual Kennedys. The lack of soul and emphasis on the point are also mentioned as complaints.

"...book - the narrator speaking half a sentence, then a very long parenthetical comment, followed by the rest of the original sentence...." Read more

"...into it I became annoyed and frustrated with Halberstam's verbose, ponderous, pretentious writing...." Read more

"...On the other hand, the books suffers from rambling, free association, and repetiveness. It really needed a better editor and better organization...." Read more

"...It provides no additional emphasis to the point - just bloat. These examples are too numerous to mention and appear throughout the book...." Read more

15 customers mention "Length"4 positive11 negative

Customers find the book too long. They say it could have been much shorter and still been accurate. The span of time covered is shorter than in books by Stanley Karnow and Max Hastings.

"...The span of time covered is shorter than the books by Stanley Karnow and Max Hastings." Read more

"...Long, detailed and even boring but it shows all details of insane actions. Good reading." Read more

"I read this book because it is recommended in "Fire & Fury". It is a lengthy book, well written, detailing the reasoning why and how the US entered..." Read more

"...Clinton are all devotees of this book, but it's maybe a couple of hundred pages too long." Read more

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Vincent Tomasino
Decisions that led to 59,000 US and 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead.
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2007
Verified Purchase
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST by David Halberstam interprets US Foreign Policy of the Vietnam War as delusional.

The principals: Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, William Bundy, George Ball, Dean Rusk, Averill Harriman, and Dean Acheson, not to mention Maxwell Taylor, and General Westmoreland. There are others of course.

The author weaves the character of each individual with the politics of the day and shows how it led to decisions that were made from inner needs and wishful thinking rather than on facts. This error in thinking started at "the creation" i.e. the end of WWII. It torpedoed the power of rational thought.

Halberstam reasons that the US perceived the Soviets to be on the verge to swallow Western Europe. This led the US to turn to France to provide a bastion against them. Charles De Gaulle was ready to cooperate but only if the US allowed France to seize Indochina again.

In Halberstam's mind, the loss of China to the Communists, the Communist North Korean invasion of South Korea, the Communist Chinese invasion of Korea, McCarthy's hunt for Communists in the government, and then the Cuban missile crisis exacerbated and perpetuated fears about world domination by the Communists. These factors, according to Halberstam, contributed to the continued support of France in Indochina as an ally against monolithic Communism. After Dienbienphu, we did replace the French and decided that we would carry the crusade against Communism. We were then perceived by Ho Chi Minh as another western power colluding with another western but effete colonial power. The US nevertheless chose to allow France to regress to its former status as a colonial power over Vietnam in the name of stopping Communist aggression.

Neither Kennedy nor Johnson could show hesitation, ambivalence, or appeasement. Their obsession of not wanting to be viewed as weak trumped their instincts to look for alternatives. All the leaders, especially Dean Rusk, and with the exception of George Ball, put forth the Munich analogy to justify intervention and escalation.

In Halberstam's analysis, the Vietnam War was a defeat before it even began because it was based on a faulty strategy: To stop communist aggression. The idea to expel the French once and for all and to help unify North and South Vietnam was thought about but never acted upon.

Halberstam holds the Bundy brothers along with McNamara responsible not only as instigators but the propagators of the war. McNamara was characterized as a whiz kid with a funny haircut who used his unbelievable grasp of statistics to flim-flam the pentagon in doing his bidding. It brings to mind Mark Twain's three types of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Despite their super-education, their impeccable character, and their natural brilliance all the principals viewed the war as a war against Communist hegemony; they too could not show any hesitation, ambivalence, or appeasement to their president. To do otherwise was political suicide. On the other hand, George Ball was consistent in his opposition to the war from JFK to LBJ. To Halberstam JFK was changing his mind about the morality of the war but got gunned down; George Ball was the hero, LBJ the loser and France the thorn in our side.

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soldiernofortune
Were you a Pawn in their game?
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2023
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If you were drafted and had to serve under LBJ and wondered how naive Americans
were in the 60's, you may want to read this book. What a Croc of Stuff--people with years of experience and knowledge of Vietnam were purged from group of advisors if they did not know how to "go along
to get along." This book is half biographies of about a dozen men and half historical matter; makes generals look dumb and proven liars (yes, we had them back then too). Group think of Military men helped to kill over 58,000 Americans. Unless you believed in Colonization (Saigon leaders spoke French and had been educated by French), or believed in "saving face," or bit on the crap about "dominoes," this War was not for you. A great investigative book about a pathetic War. Purely Pathetic Time in America.
It was a page turner in that I learned so much about personalities and who stood for what and who had backbone and who did not. The book was NOT a page turner because it was exciting. Time is
suppose to heal but Vietnam is a running sore for me. What is additionally sad is that we did not learn much from our involvement--30 years later we saw Powell lie and "Vice" have boys killed looking for WMD which did not exist. Et Cetera! Truly thankful that this book was written. Thanks, David--you RIP

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Magnitude
American hubris
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2017
Verified Purchase
Second read. This review is of the 1993 Ballantine Books softcover.

This is a solid introduction to the thinking and bureaucratic struggles on the US side that led to a failed policy and war in Vietnam.

Several streams of thinking went into these decisions. As Halberstam recounts, a major fear for Democrats across two presidencies and after McCarthyism was being pegged as soft on communism. Johnson, in particular, felt that getting labelled as such would jeapordize his Great Society program. The US lost a lot of its Asian expertise due to the McCarthy-era purges; many of these China experts warned about Chiang's weakeness, and so were tarred with the communist brush. Another component was a sense of 1960s can-do optimism, which was fostered by men who seemed to have easy success in their lives, and a sense that American power can achieve anything.

There was an ongoing sense that, in order to reassure Western Europe about the USSR, we had to show that we had the resolve to stand up to communist aggression in places like Vietnam. Too, there was a belief in a global, unified communist threat, and a misperception that China was the main driver in Vietnam, similar to its role in the Korean conflict. Again and again, Johnson and other key leaders assumed that Ho would respond the way they would respond; drop a few bombs on Hanoi, ask for negotiations. Repeatedly, this never seemed to work, and the through these kinds of half-steps, the US tip-toed into a full-blown war. The Johnson administration, in particular, was never completely transparent about the truth of the Vietnam war, and the best example of this perhaps came during the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

Throughout, there are some implicit sub-themes. There was a fundamental lack of honesty. Military reporting was fudged. The Army, in particular, seemed to be under pressure in the nuclear era to prove that it had a useful role, to prove that it could make counterinsurgency work. The squashing of the China experts was really a punishment for honest reporting and clarity of insight from the State Department. Robert McNamara would forcefully cut down dissenters in meetings, but then privately harbor his own doubts, grow closer to Robert Kennedy, and order the compilation of the Pentagon Papers (if anything, a massive compilation of the internal debates about Vietnam policy).

If anything, the leadership lied to itself. There was a bureaucratic, quite corporate pressure to be on the same page as the President, to maintain one's position and stay close to the power circle of decision makers. The State Department could have balanced the military point of view, but as Halberstam tells it, Rusk was more of a passive player, acquiescing to the more vocal and forceful McNamara. As a result, Defense became the driving force of policy toward Vietnam. Too, the long involvement of several key players (Taylor, McNamara, Rusk) across administrations may have reinforced thinking when fresh thinking, and a willingness to admit mistakes, was vitally needed.

Another sub-theme, seldom articulated plainly in most histories on the subject, is that this war was led by the Greatest Generation. World War II (and, of course, Korea) shaped much of the perceptions of the American leadership of this war, and just about every player served in some way during WWII. Kennedy, Westmoreland, Taylor, Rusk, McNamara, and even Johnson all served in WWII. How their war experiences shaped their thinking isn't made entirely clear, except perhaps that WWII shaped their perceptions of American power, a noble cause, and a sense of personal commitment to a fight. Involvement in WWII also may have tended to give their judgments great weight, even when they were flat-out wrong. Halberstam includes one quote from Johnson, who slammed a dissenter for not being to young to be in WWII, which alone says a lot.

The Author's Note is perhaps the most clear about Halberstam's methods, intent, and clarifying some of these themes. This is not a historian's book, with plenty of footnotes and primary documents cited. Rather, what is impressive is that Halberstam conducted some 500 interviews, sometimes interviewing the same subject 10 times for clarification. He also candidly admits that he went through the typical Vietnam arc in his own experience: approaching it with optimism and a determination to stop communism, and then slowly realizing the truth, seeing the lack of progress, and sensing the inevitable defeat. Through this approach, seldom has history seemed so human, the foibles of leadership easy to understand.

Still, I'm bothered by Halberstam's tendency to overwrite. One example: even his "Epilogue" is followed by "A Final Word." Not that I'm against long books; I've read this one twice, after all. It's that Halberstam, at least here, can be unclear in some spots. His tendency to use long parenthetical statements doesn't help. For every jewel of clarity, I've stumbled upon an equal number of opaque rocks. For example, a couple of times he brings up possible racism as a undercurrent in American thinking about Asian and thereby Vietnam. If true, it no doubt may have clouded thinking about policy, but Halberstam mentions this only in passing and it therefore comes across as a poorly argued afterthought.

In that way, I have wished Halberstam's writing could be more focused. Here, I was surprised by a revelation in the Author's Note. In the next-to-last page he admits his indebtedness to a State Department official, James Thomson. Thomson wrote in the Atlantic Monthly what essentially is an outline for Halberstam's book. This 1968 article is available online and perhaps gets to the heart of the matter much more cogently in one article than Halberstam was able to in his book. As Halberstam wrote, Thomson's article "is by far the best single analysis of what happened." Indeed.

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A. John Valois
For book lovers
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2024
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Good read.

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AB
Excellent
Reviewed in Canada on November 6, 2021
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Finally reading this. Love it.

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Thomé Madeira
Even the Best fail
Reviewed in Brazil on October 2, 2021
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When the best and the brightest gather , we expect the finest , but sometimes the results are less than pity... that is what I've seen , in the greatest and dreadful mistake in American History

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Mr J OBrien
If only we had ever learned from this
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2021
Verified Purchase
As I write this review, the Taliban have entered Kabul with little apparent resistance. 20 years after going in after 9/11, all guns and modern technology blazing, the modern armies the the west (principally the USA) are staring ignominious defeat in the face, once again to a 3rd World rag-tag force. Eerily, the situation in Afghanistan looks like the fall of Saigon all over again.
This book describes brilliantly how a group of exceptionally talented individuals at the highest level of the US government got Vietnam so terribly wrong. Intelligence, however, is not everything. As these individuals took power after Kennedy’s election in 1960, they looked an impressive bunch. However, as one seasoned political hack observed, he would have felt much happier if they had “ever actually run something”. Intelligence brings baggage with it, namely arrogance and hubris. LBJ decided, after JFKs death, to keep the ‘best and the brightest’ in place. This would prove a pivotal decision.
This book analyses the fundamental mistakes made as the Vietnam conflict escalated. The Democrats, wounded by the apparent charge that they had ‘lost China’ a decade before, were terrified that they would forever be seen as weak in the face of communism. This fear helped shape their future decisions.
Their strategy was based on a number of flawed assumptions. Firstly, that a 3rd world army was no match for a modern one, that AirPower was decisive, the South Vietnamese government would get better and win local support, and that in the short term Ho Chi Minh would be forced to negotiate. Lets consider each in turn.
The Generals were trained and had experience of fighting conventional European style wars. The Vietcong could just melt away, strike at will and then disappear. Hanoi could also reinforce battalions with ease and send them down the Ho Chi Minh trail. The US, thousands of miles from home, had Congress and the public to deal with. Also, Ho Chi Minh was fighting for an idea- they were in it to change their country. The southern government was corrupt, repressive and unpopular, with coups a normal occurrence. No wonder the natives flocked to Ho Chi Minh. The ‘best’ also had a condescending view of the Vietnamese- surely these people, simple as they are, will see what we are doing for them? However, this book explains that the conflict owes at least as much to Nationalism as it did to Communism. The French Indo-China war had done for the colonial power, enhancing the growing sense of Vietnamese nationhood, which was further developed by subsequent US involvement. The fact that the French, a decent army, was beaten should have sounded alarm bells for the US, but again this apparent contempt for all this not American seems incredible in retrospect. AirPower alone, was never enough to force Hanoi, fighting in their own backyard and knowledgable of the terrain, able to replenish losses at will, to the negotiating table. It was a fantasy. The author describes Vietnam as a ‘tar-baby’ the more you struggle the more you get stuck.
Finally, the US simply underestimated Ho Chi Minh as an adversary. Also, the book describes how the ‘reports’ that reached the desks of the Pentagon were always hopelessness optimistic - a lesson to all about the dangers of subordinates telling you what you want to hear rather than the truth.
The best and the brightest is a seminal work that everyone who aspires to office should read. What’s clear is how few people appear to have done so.
One haunting section has proven to be eerily prescient as the Talibon, today, enter Kabul with little apparent resistance. In the mid 60’s Robert McNamara was asked by a question by a subordinate. What, he asked, was to stop the Vietcong just waiting for the day when inevitably we would have to go home? Would they not just take over? McNamara paused, and replied that he had not thought of that. And so in 2021, over 40 years since the fall of Saigon, we see the exact same playing out again in Kabul.
The Best and the Brightest is an important lesson for all of those who believe to much in themselves.

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Charles de Talhouet
,,,
Reviewed in France on November 7, 2020
Verified Purchase
excellent

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Oscar Puerto
Obra colosal
Reviewed in Spain on March 9, 2020
Verified Purchase
Un detalladisimo ensayo de como los hombres mas brillantes y mejores pudieron llevar a Estados Unidos a perder una guerra. Muy recomendable.

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