Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. Greenwich CT: Fawcett
Publications, 1973. 831 pages.
David Halberstam's monumental history of how the U.S. got involved in
Vietnam has proved so influential that its title phrase has entered the
language. Halberstam's original "best and brightest" were the key policy-
makers appointed by John Kennedy: McNamara, McGeorge and William Bundy,
Rusk, Ball, Westmoreland, and Taylor. At the outset, this team of Ivy
Leaguers and West Pointers expected to surpass the accomplishments of
their great Second World War predecessors. Instead, they embroiled this
nation in the Second Indochina War and all but tore it apart -- and never
mind what they did to the Indochinese. Using the techniques of a
quintessential "insider" journalist, Halberstam sets out to show how this
happened. His book is built up, like a coral reef, out of thousands of
insider anecdotes, many of them genuinely revelatory: e.g., the newly-
elected JFK going to Wall Street's Robert Lovett to find out whom he should
appoint to what. But its subtext is Halberstam's deep romantic love for a
U.S. Establishment his own great merit allowed him to join -- a love not
all readers will be able to share. Some will also hunger for the "why" of
Vietnam as well as the how -- a question that may require going beyond
anecdotes.
-- Steve Badrich
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