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mobyhex t1_j5p7607 wrote

I'm on my 3rd time through the audiobook version of The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. Anyone else enjoy this book? Just absolutely THEE most enjoyable book I have ever read. I'm trying to figure out what makes me keep coming back to this book and wondering if there are any others like it out there.

I love it because:

  • It's a deeply personal take by a great writer
  • It's has an ambitious breadth and tells a wide range of interconnected stories - I thoroughly enjoy his approach - I never felt quite lost - but by the end I always want to start over.
  • It concentrates on all the 2nd to 5th tier policy people who made the Vietnam tragedy possible
  • I love Cold War history
  • The narrator on this audiobook is just a perfect match for the content
  • There's a kind of a smarmy, joyous glee in bringing some of these people down to scale. I just listened to the stuff on McGeorge Bundy and couldn't get enough.
  • It's a breathtakingly tragic story in the end - so many steps along the way - so many had a hand in letting this inch on and on.
  • Love the stuff on China, the background on losing China.

I've never encountered a book that gave me such a thorough understanding of events while at the same time being a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Are there other history/nonfiction authors like this?

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bangdazap t1_j5pwprj wrote

You might enjoy A Bright Shining Lie - John Paul Van and the American War in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan, a colleague of Halberstam's during the early part of the Vietnam War. It covers the early part of the Vietnam War, through the lens of US adviser to the RVN John Paul Van.

Another colleague of Halberstam's was Michael Herr, who wrote Dispatches (I think it's a collection of reports he filed during the war). More of an impressionistic picture of the war, less of a history. You might recognize some of the scenes from the film Apocalypse Now from this book (IIRC, it was a while since I read it).

Not a history of the war, but William W. Prochnau's Once Upon a Distant War is a story about the young journalists (Halberstam among them) who caused the US government so much grief through their reporting on the Vietnam War. Find out why some called it "Halberstam's War".

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KeeperofQueensCorgis t1_j646rjb wrote

> The Best and the Brightest

Is this the book that tries to explain how the US got itself into the situation it did in Vietnam despite having the 'best and the brightest' minds in the country in charge?

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