The Best and the Brightest
<p><b>David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a foreword by Senator John McCain. </b></p> <p><b>"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.” (</b><b><i>The New York Times</i></b><b>) </b></p> <p>Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, <i>The Best and the Brightest</i> 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 As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded.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. </p> <p>“The most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam.... It is also the <i>Iliad</i> of the American empire and the <i>Odyssey</i> of this nation’s search for its idealistic soul. <i>The Best and the Brightest </i>is almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.” (<i>The Boston Globe</i>) </p> <p>“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.” (<i>Los Angeles Times</i>) </p> <p>“A fascinating tale of folly and self-deception... [An] absorbing, detailed, and devastatingly caustic tale of Washington in the days of the Caesars.” (<i>The Washington Post Book World</i>) </p> <p>“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.” (<i>Newsweek</i>) </p> <p>“A story every American should read.” (<i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</i>)</p>