The Best and the Brightest -- David Halberstam

<b>David Halberstam's masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a new Foreword by Senator John McCain.</b> <p/><b>A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience."--<i>The New York Times</i></b> <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 As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded.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/><b>Praise for <i>The Best and the Brightest</i></b> <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."<b>--</b><i><b>The Boston Globe<br></b></i><br>"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."<b>--<i>Los Angeles Times</i></b> <p/>"A fascinating tale of folly and self-deception . . . An] absorbing, detailed, and devastatingly caustic tale of Washingto