the road not taken: edward lansdale and the american tragedy in vietnam  <p><strong>finalist for the pulitzer prize (biography)<br /><br><br /><br>a <em>new york times</em> bestseller, this “epic and elegant” biography (<em>wall street journal</em>) profoundly recasts our understanding of the vietnam war.</strong></p><br><p>praised as a “superb scholarly achievement” (<em>foreign policy</em>), <em>the road not taken</em> confirms max boot’s role as a “master chronicler” (<em>washington times</em>) of american military affairs. through dozens of interviews and never-before-seen documents, boot rescues edward lansdale (1908–1987) from historical ignominy to “restore a sense of proportion” to this “political svengali, or ‘lawrence of asia’ ”(<em>the new yorker</em>). boot demonstrates how lansdale, the man said to be the fictional model for graham greene’s <em>the quiet american</em>, pioneered a “hearts and minds” diplomacy, first in the philippines and then in vietnam. bringing a tragic complexity to lansdale and a nuanced analysis to his visionary foreign policy, boot suggests vietnam could have been different had we only listened.</p><br><p>with contemporary reverberations in iraq, afghanistan, and syria, <em>the road not taken</em> is a “judicious and absorbing” (<em>new york times book review</em>) biography of lasting historical consequence.</p>