- Paperback: 480 pages
- Publisher: Random House USA Inc; New edition edition (1 July 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679767495
- ISBN-13: 978-0679767497
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 2.9 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
123,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #49 in Books > Biography > Historical > United States > Vietnam War
- #67 in Books > Biography > War & Espionage > Vietnam War
- #71 in Books > History > Countries & Regions > Asia > 1946-Present
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Product Description
Product Description
The #1 national bestseller--an indispensable document for anyone interested in the Vietnam War. McNamara's controversial book tells the inside and personal story of America's descent into Vietnam from a unique point of view, and is one of the most enlightening books about government ever written. This new edition features a new Foreword by McNamara. of photos. (Military History)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a powerful explanation of what many people called "McNamara's War." It is intellectually honest, well-researched and an enormous insight to how President Lyndon Johnson's White House operated.
The author explains how Johnson inherited a "God-awful" mess eminently more dangerous than the one Kennedy had inherited from Eisenhower. One evening not long after he took office, Johnson confessed to his aide Bill Moyers that he felt like a catfish that had "just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it," McNamara writes. In the last two chapters, "Estrangement and Departure" and "The Lessons of Vietnam" McNamara bravely admits many mistakes. The most glaring was not holding the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff accountable for its many reporting failures.
It took McNamara nearly thirty years to finally tell his side of the story. It was worth the wait.
Bert Ruiz
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book provides riveting insight into the crucial and excruciating decisions that determined U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. It not only provides a good overview of the war for people unfamiliar with it, but detailed explanations of critical junctures and how those decisions impacted the war's outcome. But the most amazing part of this book is how level and even-handed it is. Reflection usually provides someone ample opportunity to exaggerate, point fingers, exonerate oneself, etc. Robert McNamara rarely indulges in any of these. He is capable of writing not once but many times, the plain, devastating sentence which is almost unseen in this modern age: "We were wrong."
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The horns of the dilemma that trapped us: the South Vietnamese had to win it and we could not lose it. With just the right amount of detail, McNamara clearly conveys the power of inertia that drove the U.S. to crucify itself for the sake of ideology and international prestige. This book makes me wonder how government functions at all. We expect the executive branch to make sense of voluminous data, to direct a multitude of bureaucrats and a host of officials, who all have their own egos and points of view, in a swirl of ever changing and complex events. McNamara says there was never time to adequately address Vietnam on its own amid the daily decision making and the account in this book is the proof. McNamara gave himself over to his job and tried to rationalize the irrational. He was the one who ordered the study that ended up being revealed by Daniel Ellsberg as The Pentagon Papers. He makes the case clearly that those who say we didn't do enough to win have a hard case to prove. Above all McNamara is adamant against the use of nuclear weapons and that was the ultimate constraint on our activities in Southeast Asia. Most disturbing to me is that while top officials held meetings and floundered in seeming helplessness on the hook of Vietnam, hundreds, thousands were dying in the jungles. In the dictionary, many words have several definitions. Under the word tragedy, one of them should simply be "Vietnam". Two statements made by McNamara in this book remain in my mind: not all problems have immediate solutions and military actions have unforeseen consequences.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
More should follow McNamara's example
If only more key decision makers on the world stage would make similar literary undertakings. This is RS McNamara's account of his early career and subsequent term as Secretary of... Read more
Published on 14 July 2007 by Overseas Reviewer
McNamara is still deluding himself
AS an amateur historian on Vietnam, I grabbed this book right away. I thought a man as smart as McNamara would finally spill the beans after all these years. Read more
Published on 13 Aug 1999
We already knew this!
I admire McNamara for his "coming" out of the closet, but he has told us nothing we didn't already know. Bob, you are years and 58,000 lives too late. Read more
Published on 28 May 1999
Provides insight
Everything is much clearer in retrospect. This book reveals the thinking behind the decisions about the war, and how mistaken it was, given what we now know.
Published on 9 May 1999
Politically Informative
As someone who knew very little about the Vietnam war, I found this book to be informative in the chronology of many of the events leading up to the war's escalation. Read more
Published on 20 April 1999
Pure Drivel
It's really easy, guys: YOU DON'T KILL OTHER PEOPLE. IT'S IMPOLITE.
Published on 10 Mar 1999
good overview of what happened in vietnam
and the mistakes that were made . . . i particularly liked the last chapter, dealing wtih the lessons that we need to learn.
Published on 14 Feb 1999
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