They were cocksure, morally careless and so mesmerized by American power that they did not bother trying to understand Vietnam's complexities. Langguth's portrayal of the Vietnam policy makers leaves the same impressions as Halberstam's: National security adviser for both John F. More than half of the book's nearly 700 pages of text are devoted to these architects - the group immortalized long ago by David Halberstam as ''the best and the brightest,'' and epitomized by such men as McGeorge Bundy, the Though, is on United States policy and the men (no women were involved) who made it. As that suggests, Langguth makes an attempt to show the Vietnamese perspective on events, offering a number of new disclosures gleaned from interviews in Vietnam. The list also includes the names of significant Each of his chapters is titled for one of the principalĬharacters in the long Vietnam drama, among them presidents and other top American officials of the era, as well as figures like Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Langguth, a former Saigon bureau chief for The New York Times who now teaches journalism at the University of Southern California, tells the story mainly through the actions of key personalities. But his account forcefully reminds us of the unwelcome but inescapable truth: that America's war in Vietnam was a colossal, costly, unnecessaryįailure, brought about by men who were smart but not wise and whose mistakes left wounds in American institutions that have still not healed. In ''Our Vietnam,'' Langguth lets the facts speak for themselves, for the most part. Langguth's dense, sober, fair-minded study, which comes out at a time when our memories of the war are beginning to be covered over by a rose-colored haze of self-forgiveness. Ith the Vietnam War now more than 25 years behind us, it might seem odd to refer to a new history of the conflict as timely. Lyndon Johnson didn't think Vietnam was worth fighting for.
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