Posts Tagged ‘ David Halberstam ’

Halberstam’s ‘Best-Brightest’ Blunder-2

May 19, 2011

David Halberstam won acclaim and riches from his influential book, The Best and the Brightest, about the making of the Vietnam War, especially during the Kennedy and Johnson years. However, in retrospect, the book’s narrative – asserting that John Kennedy and his team of East Coast intellectuals arrogantly paved the way to war – fails…

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Halberstam’s ‘Best-Brightest’ Blunder

May 17, 2011

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam shaped the American narrative of the Vietnam War, making it a cautionary tale about the folly of action-oriented intellectuals who surrounded President John F. Kennedy and whose hubris supposedly plunged the nation into a destructive war. But is Halberstam’s widely embraced storyline correct? In this analysis of…

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