David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy.

Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest 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 As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded.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.

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience." The New York Times

"For anyone who aspires to a position of national leadership, no matter the circumstances of his or her birth, this book should be mandatory reading. And anyone who feels a need, as a confused former prisoner of war once felt the need, for insights into how a great and good nation can lose a war and see its worthy purposes and principles destroyed by self-delusion can do no better than to read and reread David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest."

--from the Foreword by Senator John McCain

"The most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam. . . . [I]t is also The Iliad of the American empire and The Odyssey of this nation’s search for its idealistic soul."

--The Boston Globe

"Seductively readable. . . . [I]t is a staggeringly ambitious undertaking that is fully matched by Halberstam’s perfor-mance."

--Newsweek

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience."

--The New York Times

From the Hardcover edition.

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience." — The New York Times

"[The] most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam. It is also the Iliad of the American empire and the Odyssey of this nation's search for its idealistic soul. THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST is almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller." — The Boston Globe

"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." — Los Angeles Times

"Most impressive, superb — perceptive, literary, multidimensional." — The New York Times Book Review

"A story which every American should read." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Includes bibliographical references (p. [673]-678) and index.

David Halberstam is the author of a number of books, including The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, Summer of '49, and Playing for Keeps. He lives in New York City. His new book, War in a Time of Peace, will be published in September, 2001.

Senator John McCain is the author of Faith of My Fathers. After a career in the United States Navy and two terms as United States Representative, he was elected to the Senate in 1986, 1992, and 1998. He and his wife, Cindy, reside in Phoenix.

From the Hardcover edition.