America /The Best and the Brightest

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST

DAVID HALBERSTAM, ©1969 ​
The Best and the Brightest traces the origins of the Vietnam War based on years of research.  The book focuses on the erroneous foreign policy crafted by the academics and intellectuals who were in John F. Kennedy's administration, and the disastrous consequences of those policies in Vietnam.

NOTABLE QUOTES

“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

A true masterpiece. It is hard to believe that I am reading this book in 2017, but it is still relevant today, offering insights that policy makers can still learn from. To that end I was reminded of this book by a news report that Steve Bannon was spotted with a copy of the book at an airport. Yes, very relevant today.

Bill Manzi, April 2, 2017

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REVIEWS

David C. Hendrickson, Foreign Affairs
September/October 1997

The Best and the Brightest

Never had the Establishment been so artfully skewered as in this study of the generation of policymakers that led the United States into the Vietnam War. It was more the method than the conclusions of this work that made it distinctive. The same novelistic techniques and extraordinary imagination that got Tom Wolfe into the heads of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters were employed by Halberstam to illuminate the thinking of the foreign policy elite under Kennedy and Johnson; here, at least, the New Journalism met Diplomatic History to brilliant effect. The arrogance of Robert McNamara, the piety of Dean Rusk, the happy vulgarity of Lyndon Johnson ("Hell, it is part rattlesnake") are sketched with unerring precision. This study of how pride goeth before the Fall captured the outlook and sensibility of that era as few professional historians have been able to do.
Marc Leepson
December 2014

Top 30 Vietnam War Books (excerpt)

Halberstam, who was a Vietnam War correspondent for The New York Times, produced a deeply researched, clearly and engagingly written history of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. He focuses on personalities—primarily the “best and brightest” of John F. Kennedy’s administration, including Robert McNamara, Walt Rostow, McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk and General Maxwell Taylor—and the many mistakes they made in prosecuting the war. In The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam set out to answer the question, “What was it about the men, their attitudes, the country, its institutions and above all the era which had allowed this tragedy to take place?” Halberstam died in an automobile accident in 2007.

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