"A Bright and Shining Lie"...Who's read it?

[bicentennial_baby]

I just picked it up and am cruising through it at a good clip. Who here has read it? What did you think of it?

[chelsea0011]

1. One of the greatest books I had ever read.

I thought it was a stroke of genius to tell the story of Vietnam through the eyes of one military man. It is very relevant to Iraq today no matter how many can't stand the idea of comparing Vietnam to Iraq.

[amandabeech]

5. I read it a long time ago,

and was thinking about the book this week. The situation in Iraq this week gave me an awful "Vietnamy" feeling. Escalating casualties, many of whom would have been dead rather than wounded if this were the 1960's, ambushes, attacks all over the country, including areas that had been thought to be "pacified," Iraqis seemingly cooperative one day and shooting at troops the next.

I'm just waiting for General Sanchez to appear on TV each night giving us the Iraqi body count.

I just wonder what some of our bright young men are actually doing in Iraq. Are some of these mercenaries and contract workers who are attacked or now kidnapped/missing CIA?

We really need to get out of Iraq before we do any more damage to the Iraqis or ourselves.

This afternoon, I'm going to rummage though those boxes of books in the attic to see if I still have my copy of "Bright and Shining." It would be a timely re-read.

[markses]

2. I've read it

Really beautiful book, and constitutes a "life's work" for Neil Sheehan (somebody should make a Pollock type movie about this guy). The John Paul Vann figure is, of course, the tragedy of post-World War II America.

Where are our Neil Sheehan's today?

(It is, actually, a bit diconcerting to go back and read some actualk articles Sheehan wrote for the NY Times. Sheehan's reporting on the Ia Drang Valley campaign of 1965 - best told in Moore and Galloway's "We Were Soldeirs Once...and Young" - is bizarre, for instance.)

[amandabeech]

7. The Bush folks seem as though they never went through

Vietnam. They are still caught in, as you so eloquently state, "the tragedy of post-World War II America."

[fishnfla]

3. Great Book

great analysis. do you know what a tragic flaw is?

[Toby109]

4. Excellent book.

I read somewhere that the book is considered one of the top pieces of journalism of the 20th century.

[MajorFlaw]

6. Best book on our involvement in Vietnam I've read.

Unfortunately shrub doesn't have the attention span to read anything that long. Too bad, he could read about what awaits us if we remain in Iraq.

[markses]

8. If you're at all interested in the French War in Indochina

You have to read Bernard Fall's

1) Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
2) Street Without Joy (the French and Foreign Legion soldiers called Highway 1, which runs N-S along the coast, La Rue sans Joie, or "Street Without Joy." The name doesn't really translate that well, since it is a sound play on common French street names like "La Rue Saint Jacques" (St. John's Street). There was, of course, the famous French movie of the same name, I think from the mid-1930's. I guess the equivalent would be like calling a street "Hell Street" rather than Elm Street, etc. Great book, in any case.)

Another great book on the early Vietnam War is Jeffrey Race's

War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province

I think this book is actually cited or at least mentioned at length in A Bright Shining Lie.

[SharonAnn]

9. It changed my thinking about our government. When I realized

that all these things I'd been uneasy about regarding Vietnam were far more serious than I'd realized and that our government had lied to us for years and years about what was going on, the scales fell from my eyes.

I then devoured everything I could read about the subject and, unfortunately, that's why I've been suspicious about the motives of our politicians ever since.

It's probably a healthier attitude and has made me take responsibility for actively participating in the political process.

If I could recommend only one book about the Vietnam war, I would recommend "A Bright, Shining Lie".

[mainer]

10. I have

Now I hope someone writes a "Bright and Shining Lie" about the Iraq war.

[Jim__]

11. Great book!

I thought I knew a lot about the Vietnam War. That book was chock full of information that I didn't know.

[buycitgo]

12. hey! one of the first things I thought of when all hell broke loose

I read it as soon as it came out

remember "Blowtorch Bob" Komer?

he's mentioned in the opening, at Vanns' funeral, or something

he was very involved in the, uh, pacification program, as they say, euphemistically.

actually it was the PHOENIX program

http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000cov/Another_Old_War_Criminal_Passes_On

I knew him slightly. he lived in Arlington, VA....I did some construction at his house, and my roommate became sort of friends with him

he had pictures of himself w/LBJ and other bigwigs all over the place.....very well connected......quite the "gruff" character

we went to a talk he gave at George Mason U one night, which was met by candle-holding protesters.....this was in the early eighties, I guess, and it was cool to see that there were people around who still remembered what was what

from a bio page...interesting site, with lots of encapsulated bios of vietman-era personalities:

Vann was given a state funeral, posthumously awarded the nation's highest civilian medal, and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Among those who came to pay their respects were General Westmoreland, Mr. Ellsberg, Edward Lansdale, the C.I.A.'s roving honcho of counterrevolution who blocked the Vietcong from taking over South Vietnam in the 1950's; Joseph Alsop, a pro-war columnist; William Colby, the C.I.A. director for covert operations; Robert Komer, the C.I.A. operative who orchestrated the Phoenix assassination squads; and Senator Edward Kennedy, one of the few legislators who shared Vann's concern for refugees of the war.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jpvann.htm

[swinney]

14. Senator William J. Fulbright book

"The Price Of Empire"--

Deja' Vu. We are living his book.

[mrdmk]

13. Read it years ago

Still to this day the book occupies a place in my office to be used as a reference.