The Best and the Brightest

This is my favorite book because Halberstam works so hard to help us understand the intellectual, moral, and personality flaws plaguing the architects of America’s Vietnam debacle.

I believe Marines must understand the civilians who hold the reins if the Corps is to become wiser. This book tells a tragic story, but wisdom and moral courage surface occasionally. Several bright moments belong to Gen. David Shoup, the 22nd Commandant of the Marine Corps.

I love the time he did his best to tell wonkish officials in the Kennedy Administration that their delusional plans for meddling in Cuba (what became “The… show more.

David Halberstam documents how fools go to war. This book is about the whiz kids that got us into the Vietnam war and ran it under the JFK and the Johnson administrations. The same ones who got us into the Iraq War, the Spanish American War, and so on. There is a quote that I love from this book that effectively says, "they used brilliant policies that defied common sense." And, that sums this all up. These whiz kids ran a war as if it was part of American politics and from thousands of miles away with memos and meetings… show more.

The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam, is a magnificent 700-page study of how the US came to be mired in the disastrous war in Vietnam. I couldn’t put the book down. It has all the ingredients of a great novel: a tragic plot of almost Shakespearean proportions, a fascinating cast of characters, and some brilliant writing. It’s a frightening account of how some of the best and brightest men of the time—John F. Kennedy, Walt Whitman Rostow, the Bundy brothers, Robert McNamara, and Dean Rusk thought that simply by the application of force and intelligence they could… show more.