John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam - A Bright Shining Lie

Very famous and justifiably so. Very distressing to read and reminds me of the turmoil and tragedy of Vietnam and how mistakenly our leaders misjudged the entire Vietnam issues. So sorry for the US military who were injured, killed and scarred for life and for the country citizens of Vietnam.
Should be a must read for all in the service academy and anyone involved in our foreign policy or defense policy .

The best book I've ever read on the Viet Nam war!. From the pre-colonial peoples of SE Asia to the French and Japanese occupation, through the American involvement. The story is personal and political. Simply a 'must read' if you want to know the 'lie' of the war in Viet Nam.

Both ordered as gifts, received in a timely manner and in great condition..Best story about US involvement in Vietnam as it covers John Paul Vann's arrival on day #1 and his exit on the last day. Its true, presented well, and is an easy read. As an adult I never studied our conflict in Vietnam in American History. This will cover it.

Great book. It was hard to put down. Much broader than I expected. The writing is excellent. The author didn't shy away from the realities of the war. Pretty graphic at times. The politics were pretty disgusting too but for different reasons obviously.

I applaud the research and effort put into "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam." Yet, as well versed as Neil Sheehan is in the history of the United States in Vietnam, his writing from pages 153 to 154 make me seriously concerned about his historiography. When he begins in earnest to tear into to the latent racism of American policy, anyone with any knowledge on the subject could only acquiesce. However, when he makes statements about the racist double standard of Americans on the WWII assembly lines, I can only read with a great deal of incredulity. How a Jounalist/historian of Mr. Sheehan's caliber could begin to compare or declare that "the Japs were not worse; the Germans were" (Sheehan, 153) is beyond comprehension.
His tirade to substantiate his claim is simply astonishing. The fact that the Nazis were efficient in killing 6 million Jews is well known. What has been utterly neglected by American popular media are the Japanese atrocities committed in China and the Pacific. To dismiss the Japanese atrocities as "haphazard" (Sheehan, 153) is remarkable. The Japanese were as ardently racist and fascist as the Nazis. Their aim was subjugation and domination of other Asians as the comfort women can attest to. For a person of Sheehan's background on Asia, to neglect the greater number of non-combatants murdered by the Japanese in China and Indochina and the fact that the Chinese were even more disturbingly used as live human experiments for both environmental effects on the body (such as freezing) or used in the development of the Japanese biological/chemical warfare programs leave me speechless. "Haphazard"? I am not clear on how one can, in 1988 (date of the publishing), retroject moral judgments on the sentiment of the American assembly-line workers. Did Germany attack the US unannounced in December 1941? One can see how in September 2001 the ire of a nation is rallied, despite the fact that we face greater threats from other sources than merely those `haphazardly' affected by the likes of Mr. Bin Laden. Perhaps that prove Sheehan's comment "Americans feared and hated the two foes in inverse proportion to the threat each posed" (Sheehan, 153.) I am largely in agreement with the other views propounded by Mr. Sheehan. However, to reduce the US policy in Asia to simple racism is a great disservice to all the veterans who died in the Pacific in World War II.
The comments he made on the internment of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans is largely tangential. Both my mother-in-law and father-in-law were interned in the 40's and any just minded person can only see this as an aggrieving affront to the Constitution and Bill of Rights allegedly enjoyed by Americans. But Sheehan's comments "The Army had the gall to ask the Nisei of military age to fight" (Sheehan, 154) is again not with out precedence. One need only consider President Polk's demanding of Mormon leader Brigham Young to furnish troops to fight in the war with Mexico after the same government had turned a deaf ear to calls for protection against abuses against Mormon's civil rights in Ohio and Missouri. One need note the Mormons were already 'de facto exiles' with the majority forced out of American states and territories; nevertheless the troops were provided, though they were white and european emigres. This leads me to believe that Mr. Sheehan is not above race-bating to further make his case. This of course has the opposite effect on one such as myself, who is aware of civil injustices by all three branches of American government in the last 200 years (against Blacks, Sikhs, etc., but one need not be an ethnic minority, as Mennonites imprisoned during WWI prove.) Why Sheehan should think he needed to go to such lengths leaves me scratching my head, as the evidence of American stupidity in foreign policy needs no embellishment. Its chicanery and foolishness stacks appallingly tall of its own accord.

Having been in the Air Force during this time, I thought I was more knowledgeable about the events and politics of the Vietnam War that I was before reading this book. I was left with disillusionment, even disgust, at the depths of corruption within the Vietnam government and the dedication and bravery of a handful of people who tried to combat both it and the enemy . . . not to mention the inept handling of the war on the part of our own government. A sad combat that took so many lives as we vainly sought to pull the French chestnuts out of the fire.

I enjoyed the book as the research was extensive. Their was much to be learned from Mr. Sheehan and John Paul Vann. His narrative was gripping and I often could not put the book down. Unfortunately Mr. Sheehan like many journalists at the time had a strong anti war narrative along with the facts often playing down atrocities of the NVA and VC while spotlighting those of the US and ARVN. His narrative that the war couldn't be won is at odds with later in the book the war being won. Due to weak politicians, negative media, and the political climate at home it was called off and ultimately cancelled by politicians. However it was a good read and very, very informative.

This book gives a detail history of the involvement of the US in Vietnam many years prior to John Kennedy "sending advisors". If we do not learn from this tragic history, we are destined to repeat it.

Since 1969 I have been engaged in an aid program to be realized when the war has come to an end. From 1969 I studied the needs and possibilities until 1945 when a huge program was agreed between North Vietnam and my country, Sweden. The implementation started1945.
To me as,having traveled to North Vietnam many times, even through bombings in Hanoi it was interesting to read as much as possible about the war and what caused it. Later I have read other, later books, about the conflict and the European impact which has given me a more total picture of the war and its causes.
I was recommended the book by a Vietnames forester who was my counterpart in the aid project.

Neil Sheehan’s work “A Bright Shining Lie” is a deeply profound and insightful biography of the people and events that drew the U.S. into the national morass of Vietnam. His detailed references to the painful truths ignored by the highest levels of military leadership documents the many fantasies associated with the strategic thinking of American military planners during the 1962 to 1963 period.

By means of the author’s descriptive reporting, the reader, or as in my case, the listener, can envision the very personal reality of living through circumstances that are beyond one’s capacity to imagine as being possible! One learns what can only be realized through first hand experience as the author enables you to fully grasp the amazing insiders story of the coup d’etat initiated by President John F.Kennedy against Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam.

This special work weaves together the Who, What,, When, Where and Why of America’s ill fated involvement in Vietnam.

The historical accuracy of the author’s reporting will grab you by the belt and challenge every instinct of common sense you can muster!

His step by step accounting of the insertion of U.S. ground troops into the fight to salvage the wishful hopes of American political and military leaders abruptly ends, and the author goes back in time, to illustrate the life and harsh upbringing of John Paul Vann under difficult family circumstances. This biographical sketch carefully traces John Paul Vann’s journey into manhood, his new life as a family man while in the Army, and elaborates on the culture of the era.

The Korean War lurches John Paul Vann into the deadly arena of wholesale slaughter. The author elaborates on the willful lack of objectivity of American political leadership, and the horrific consequences this incompetence had on U.S. combat forces. Family matters of a medical nature extracted John Vann from further combat early in the War and facilitated his return, against his wishes, to the U.S. with his family. Once again, the author highlights the personal journey of John Vann, emphasizing his pretense of a mature relational morality and the deliberate neglect of his family. Fundamentally, John Vann lacked the emotional instincts of a family man. His own interests led him back to Vietnam, where the environment of the fight fits the zeitgeist of his own constitution.

In this contentious environment, the author refers to the “corruption and parasitic nature” of Saigon itself; “a malignancy that poisoned the entire system of government.” As the author states, “a vacuum of leadership, and a confrontation were the circumstances in which he, ”John Vann, “thrived.”

The author then adds his view that Vietnamese communism was about Nationalism and to a government not obliged to serve the interests of the U.S. This sense of Nationalism was opposed to the Americanizing of the Vietnamese culture and its politics.

Being in the field, with the people, in the middle of the conflict, was JohnVann’s niche in Vietnam. From this vantage point, John Vann developed his theory of “harnessing the revolution”, an idea which drew upon the fragile control of the Viet Cong over the population and the very real and deep seated contempt and resentment the people had for the corrupt Saigon government and the abuse they experienced from the Army of South Vietnam(ARVN). The author weaves together the frank exchange of ideas between John Vann and top military and civilian leaders responsible to policy makers in Washington.

The author provides a detailed account of how and why recommendations for new forms of social and political leadership to win over the people of South Vietnam in order to gain their support of an American sponsored government were arbitrarily dismissed by top U.S. commanders. As interesting, and revelatory, as this accounting was, it pales in comparison to the author’s skillful conveyance of real life events in a manner that transports you directly into the scene of the action. He describes a series of intriguing and deadly ambushes motivated by causal factors, which were creating the war. So compelling were the scenes being described that one could feel the sense of terror being experienced by the human targets of these assaults.

What then followed was the horrifying encounter of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry with the North Vietnamese 33rd Regiment in the Ia Drang Valley on November 14, 1965; a battle that should have been a reality check for President Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense. The hard fought battles that followed could have persuaded the President that there was ample evidence to reassess the assumptions of his political and military leadership councils. The “war of attrition” was just getting started. Big Time.

The industry, institutions, and infrastructure associated with the buildup of U.S. military forces in South Vietnam was massive. The enormous scale of the American mega involvement in South Vietnam transformed Vietnamese society into an alien Amerasian hybrid. The rich Asian culture was being buried under layers of corruption generated by American aid and assistance.

The author provides numerous examples of the parasitic nature of the Saigon government having tentacles extending throughout South Vietnam; the graft affecting every aspect of government activity, reaching all the way down to the local level.

In the military arena, the incredible battles against the jungle forts around Khe Sanh in April and May 1967 reminded Marine General Lew Walt of the fighting at Peleliu in 1944, where the Marines fought against the Japanese in steel reinforced concrete bunkers and rock caves in the hillsides of the Pacific Islands during WW II.

“The Vietnamese communists wanted violent, close quarters combat because it tended to diminish the effectiveness of air and artillery”, warned Marine General Krulak. The author’s description of these battles is breathtaking.

Referring to the regions where major battles had taken place, the author states that “Westmoreland had convenienced his enemy.” The areas in which U.S. lives were lost tell this story.

In his desire to fight a war of attrition, General William Westmoreland was fighting the enemy’s war. The North Vietnamese gave him the opportunity he had hoped for; to commit large unit forces to an all out war.

A series of studies done by associates of Robert McNamara showed that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnam Army ( N.V.A. ) initiated fighting with the Americans more than 80% of the time, on a battlefield that surprised the U.S. forces more than 85% of the time.

In May of 1967, Robert McNamara gave LBJ a memorandum that stated: “The President could not win the war in Vietnam and ought to negotiate an unfavorable peace.”

North Vietnam’s military Commander in Chief General Vo Nguyen Giap writes an article published in Military People’s Daily in September 1967 elaborating on his strategy to deploy N.V.A. troops to the border areas of South Vietnam to maximize the natural advantage of the camouflage offered by the jungle forests and to draw U.S. ground troops into the meat grinder of the jungle battlefield.

The C.I.A. obtains a copy of this article and broadcasts it on radio via “Foreign Broadcasting Information Services.”

The second battle for Khe Sanh, located in the far northwest corner of South Vietnam begins in mid January of 1968. “It was a ruse” to deceive General William Westmoreland. On January 31, 1968, the assault of communist forces begins throughout South Vietnam.

The Tet Offensive of 1968 alerts the American public to the very serious military situation occurring in South Vietnam. The public now realized what the Johnson Administration did not want it to know.

“Americans watched the country they were supposed to be rescuing being burned down and blown apart on television, in color.” Neil Sheehan

A very insightful strategic assessment by John Vann was elaborated upon by the author. The numerous casualties incurred by the Viet Cong, and the extensive relocation of refugees from the countryside to the ballooning cities changed the conditions of the war. The “Vietnamization” of the war was to be initiated in earnest by newly elected President Richard Nixon. “It’s your policy”, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, told Vann “in an exaggerated compliment.”

The peace talks between the United States and the North Vietnamese began in January 1969. The war rumbled on.

Battle plans and actual battles are carefully described in detail as events in the war unfolded. The complex battlefield strategies of the N.V.A. are sketched out in the effect their assault had on the ARVN. The time had come for the Army of the South to confront the Army of the North. The ARVN collapsed. Chaos ensued. The descriptions are horrific. Wave after wave of B-52 strikes blunted the tip and broke the shaft of the N.V.A. spearhead into the South.

Having secured the victory of stopping the invasion from the North, and knowing he had helped those that he recognized as needing his help the most, John Paul Vann was in a celebratory mood.

On June 9, 1972, this man of valor is thrown from his helicopter in a fiery crash. His body, laying broken, but not burnt, amongst the graves of Montagnard dead in a communal burial site on the edge of a hamlet; carved wooden figures nearby “staring into space”.

“The Paris Agreement of January 1973 removed the advisors and the residual U.S. military forces propping up the Saigon side, while leaving the NVA in the South to finish its task.” Neil Sheehan

Summary

So many people and events, and the complex circumstances associated with them, are referred to, written about, and described in this real life narrative that it is impossible to fully comprehend the role each had played in the overall involvement of the American war in Vietnam.

History demonstrates that the Eisenhower Administration used the ideological competition between the two super powers during the period of the Cold War to justify turning the southern territories of Vietnam into a new national state. This redefinition of foreign lands as an independent state obligated the U.S. to defend its borders. The military prestige of the U.S. would now be determined by future military events.

The Officers who had fought so bravely to win WWII, now top Generals commanding the world’s most powerful Army, Air Force and Navy, could not bring themselves to imagine that the militarily frail Vietnamese insurgency, called the Viet Minh, could ever amount to more than a brush fire. The certainty of U.S. dominance was to be taken for granted.

President Eisenhower had Ngo Dinh Diem established as President of this new U.S. Protectorate, South Vietnam. The Army of South Vietnam was funded, trained, equipped, and advised by the U.S. When they needed weaponry, they received it, i.e. artillery, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, airplanes, coastal defense, etc. America would determine the fate of this new nation.

This new military adventure into Southeast Asia was, American leaders were convinced, sure to be a small demonstration of the superiority of American power on the world stage.

The big move into the big war was initiated by President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The adverse conditions that prevented the people of Vietnam from realizing the security they needed to assure them of their personal protection persisted throughout the war and were, in many cases, actually aggravated by what the U.S. command was willing to do. The unobserved firing of artillery into the countryside, for example, was something that Vann argued should be stopped.

The wholesale corruption of the Saigon regime interfered with the availability of goods and services, often accessible only to those already in privileged positions.

These conditions were not those that the American military command wanted to confront, or acknowledge as having a serious detrimental impact on the rejuvenation of a society in the midst of a social revolution.

If this war was to be fought by Americans, it would be won or lost in the arena of combat.

Fighting the communists on a military battlefield proved to be more alluring than confronting government corruption on the political battlefield.

The Viet Cong had other ideas. They were willing to become the masters of their own destiny.

This monumental work was read by Robertson Dean, courtesy of Audible Books. The author’s exemplary effort to contribute to the full story of the American intervention into Vietnam was complimented by Mr. Dean’s communicative acumen. His reading was engaging and persuasive, capturing the imagination with an enthusiastic vigor and a serious sense of concern for the historic importance of the author’s accounting. I was absorbed, once again, into the experience of being there.
(Review by Dennis Berlin)

Had a copy of this book years ago...lost over several moves...and excellent read on some of the political moves in Viet Nam and the CIA involvment with CORDS and its objectives...Vann was a remarkable man.

What the U.S. is doing in the current conflicts is exactly what we did in the Vietnam War. Will we ever learn? This is a well written book and I am now a wiser ex-military person. I hope President Obama has read this book.

We should all read this kind of history to remind ourselves of the folly we get ourselves into when we don't understand other cultures. Although written about the Vetnam experience it could easily be about more recent conflicts in the middle east. Well written with a compelling narative about grand strategy, strategy and operations - the fundamentals still rings as true today as lessons of Vetnam did in the 1980s.

So much information, but it will leave you with a total understanding of the whys and wherefores of the Vietnam War. Well worth reading, I enjoyed it very much. Very well written, I highly recommend it.

Great book!!! If only the American Military establishment would have listened. Such a waste of good young men and more money than we could count. Vietnam should have been left to the communists. It appears to me, that they didn't get any bargain.

As a Vietnam Veteran I have wanted for years to read Colonel Vann's view on what we were doing there. Have put it off many times. Finally got copy from you. Well satisfied with the cost and shipping. This is a great, accurate piece of history that should be required reading in every American High School. Colonel Vann was one of very few who had the guts to tell it like it was.

As a Vietnam Veteran I have wanted for years to read Colonel Vann's view on what we were doing there. Have put it off many times. Finally got copy from you. Well satisfied with the cost and shipping. This is a great, accurate piece of history that should be required reading in every American High School. Colonel Vann was one of very few who had the guts to tell it like it was.

I read portions from this book many years ago for a class I was taking. I always wanted to read the complete book so am attacking it now. At 800 or so pages, it will not be a quick read, but I would highly recommend it.

It seems something heavy was on it; the binding leans; it seems to have been squished a bit. That is very minor no big deal. The cover and the pages are all in top notch shape and the book arrived quickly. Thank you. I am very happy with the book.

This book is an eye-opener to anyone who lived through this phase of American history. People leading our government really need to educate themselves better about the "enemy" before sacrificing so many lives.

I wish I had known then what I read now. It seems that history is repeating itself, just as we have been told. Politicians and those who would lead us should read and heed this book.
Vietnam Vet

great and factual book, showing the Vietnam War was a "was a bright shining lie", even though the main person personally was not a stellar individual. Nonetheless, he was a brillant military individual.

ebook format egregious errors that changed meaning. how dare they? it must be a crime against the author to misrepresent and demean his book this way. it was a very disturbing experience for me. i haven't bought an ebook since. (or the kindles i was going to buy as presents.) and i won't until the store includes a rating for "ebook quality". This is an excellent book in hardcover.

A Pulitzer Prize winning book deserves a prize winning review but since there are already plenty of those here, let me say this. A BRIGHT SHINING LIE answered some questions I've always had about Viet Nam but it raised many more that are much harder to answer.
I was aboard a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of V.N. I swallowed hook, line and sinker (many Americans did) the government lie that we could not let V.N. fall to the communists. Fall it did. And today at your local department or hardware store you can buy products made in Viet Nam. You can book vacations there if you care to. So what did all those American soldiers and Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian civilians die for? This book seems like a work of fiction. If you were to write a novel, you would be hard pressed to invent the characters, plots, sub-plots, corruption, incompetence, government and military bungling found in A.B.S.L. But the sad fact is.....it's all true.....it all really happened. Every American needs to read THIS book and also read PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE U.S. by Howard Zinn....or at least the chaptor on V.N.
A.B.S.L. details how America bombed a nation of peasant rice farmers nearly to oblivion. For what? For more medals on the sycophantic generals chests, for more votes for one corrupt political party over another? Was it to force an economic system (Capitalism) on the population of a country that clearly did not want it? As stated, this book is NOT easy to read. Not so much for the page after page of details on military strategy, battle plans and discriptions of the "lay of the land". But more for the sorrow and shame for what our nation did in south east Asia.

America had built the largest empire in history by the time John Vann reached Vietnam in 1962 - 850,000 men and civilian officials in 106 countries. Most (85%) Vietnamese lived in the countryside. The land there had known war for most of the 17 years prior to his arrival. Prior to volunteering for Vietnam duty, Lt. Col. Vann had commanded a Ranger company behind enemy lines during the Korean War. (There he'd learned that Asian peasants wanted peace and security most - they did not care who established law and order - they just responded to the side dominant at the moment.) He'd seen the U.S. Army lose battles in Korea, but not the war. He also had a MBA from Syracuse. The price of America trying to run the world after Korea had been the war in Vietnam. 'A Bright Shining Lie' book opens with the 6/1972 funeral of John Paul Vann - killed when his helicopter crashed in South Vietnam's Central Highlands after beating back an offense aimed at taking over Kontum. He'd gone to Vietnam ten years earlier when there were only 3,200 American military men in Vietnam, as a 37 year-old lieutenant-colonel volunteering to serve as senior advisor to a South Vietnamese infantry division in the Mekong Delta. Funeral attendees included Daniel Ellsberg, Lt. Gen. William DePuy, Joseph Alsop, and Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale. Pallbearers included General Westmoreland, two other Army generals, William Colby (soon to-be CIA director); other attendees included Senator Edward Kennedy, William Rogers (Secretary of State) and Melvin Laird (Secretary of Defense). Some had been instrumental in forcing Vann's earlier retirement from the Army.

Immediately Vann realized that a major component of his task would be overcoming conflicting egos between U.S. and V.N. officers; another was overcoming the V.N. sense of inferiority towards the enemy. More importantly, during that first year he saw that the war was being lost - contrary to the official Washington line. The V.C. were able to easily overrun outposts at night and capture weapons, as well as kill ARVN soldiers. He never ceased to believe the war could be won if fought with sound tactics and strategy, and when his recommendations were ignored, he leaked them to the media. Assigned to the Pentagon at the end of his tour, he tried to convince leaders there that change was needed. Again ignored, he retired from the Army at the end of July, 1963 - allowing him to speak out publicly. Vann returned to Vietnam in March, 1965 as a provincial pacification representative for the Agency for International Development (AID), never returning to the U.S. until his death. By the end of 1966 he'd been promoted to chief of the civilian pacification program for the eleven provinces surrounding Saigon - the equivalent of a major general. His reports continually denounced as self-defeating the indiscriminate bombing and shelling of the countryside in which the U.S. was trying to deprive the V.C. of their population base. Large numbers of peasants were instead driven into urban slums and refugee camps - hardly a way to win the hearts and minds of the people.

Vann's assertive bluntness put him again in disfavor in 1967 when he warned that Westmoreland's strategy of attrition was not succeeding, and that security in the countryside was worsening. However, January 31, 1968 (Tet) vindicated Vann's assessment - the VC even penetrated the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, and Westmoreland was replaced.

Vann saw much that was wrong about the war in Vietnam, but never concluded the war was wrong and unwinnable.

The guerrillas' training camps and hospitals were well hidden; Each regular and provincial guerilla carried a hammock he could sling between two trees. However, their doctrine encouraged living among the peasants, ideally in way stations and 'safe houses' they build so as to not impose on the peasantry. The V.C. also made it easy, at first, for Americans to track them. They had older American radios (WWII vintage) captured from Saigon or French forces, not realizing until an Otter with an intercept team crashed about a year later, that the Americans had broken their codes, and that the transmissions themselves gave them away. Vann was also able to obtain information from the local priest.

Reaching the heretofore immune to surprise attack smaller fortresses the V.C. had created allowed at least hours of notice that Saigon troops were coming. American helicopters reduced that to 15 minutes, with only the last minute or two providing warning if the pilots flew at treetop level for the last few miles. Another piece of American technology terrified the V.C. - tracked APCs, each with a 50-caliber machine gun and able to churn across flooded rice paddies at 10 - 20 mph. Accompanied by Vann's encouragement and flattery, the new machines and intelligence helped turn Vann's V.N. counterpart into a more aggressive fighter.

Unfortunately, those efforts didn't work. His V.N. counterpart (Cao) lacked combativeness - he'd joined the Army not because he wanted to fight, but because it offered a job in a tight economy. Another problem - poorly laid out government outposts that were repeatedly overrun, with the American-provided weapons then seized. Overall, ARVN suffered from an institutionalized unwillingness to fight. Vann saw its leaders repeatedly failing to obey orders. He couldn't get Cao replaced because, despite Cao's weakness, they were having too much (relative) success - thanks to the APCs, choppers, Skyraiders. (They'd killed over 2,000 V.C. and were the biggest successes of 1962.) Despite Vann et al's relatively attractive kill count, the V.C. count was rising.

ARVN often tortured prisoners. Along with indiscriminate bombing and bombardment, locals also suffered abuse from ARVN. Top civilian leadership saw ARVN's purpose as protecting them from a coup; as for the V.C., they believed the U.S. would not allow Saigon to be taken. Their principal export was anti-communism; as for fighting - Diem would reprimand/demote any officer who lost too many men, regardless of overall success.

V.C. fighters were known to disappear after intense and short attacks, and Vann sometimes dreamed of an opportunity to meet them in a set-piece battle. He got his wish at Ap Bac on 1/2/63, when the V.C. stayed the entire day - partly because they lacked a good alternative. Regardless, they downed 5 U.S. choppers. Final tally was 18 enemy killed and 39 wounded out of a force of around 300 - in the face of 13 planes, 600 artillery shells, 300 VN paratroopers. Vann's forces lost 83 killed, with 108 wounded - out of about 2,500.

Vann, unlike most advisors, was not tempted to conjure up success for his assigned VN units as a means of advancing his own career. He was blunt in his assessment of the Ap Bac battle. Brig. General York flew to Ap Bac to personally learn what had happened. Previously York had been an observer in a British campaign to suppress a guerrilla revolt by the Chinese minority in Malaya. There the Brits had a 20:1 advantage against a guerrilla force never greater than 10,000, as well as the advantage of racial antagonism towards the Chinese. Still, the war lasted 12 years. York realized Vann's summary was on target and supported it.

General Harkins was greatly upset over negative newspaper remarks on Ap Bac attributed to Vann - he saw the battle as a victory. Kennedy and McNamara wanted explanations, and Diem was upset over a loss of face. The Pentagon sent a high-level investigative team - unfortunately they too were taken in. Nonetheless, after Ap Bac Americans increasingly lost hope that the Vietnamese could win their own war and began to conclude that American combat troops would be needed.

Vann was assigned to Pentagon duty after his tour ended - there he spent free moments proselytizing to whomever would listen. Ultimately he was scheduled to brief the Joint Chiefs, but this was cancelled by opponents. Vann decided to leave the Army and eventually returned to VN as a civilian advisor. (Part of his rationale for leaving the Army was based on having been accused of statutory rape. Though cleared by lie-detector, it likely would have barred his promotion to general.)

U.S. Army reports were almost invariably 'progress reports.' Harkins focused on body count numbers, seeing the war as one of attrition. He believed U.S./V.N. forces would succeed in less than three years. (It had only taken 3.5 years to defeat the Germans.) Vietnamese Communist leader reports could state failure to attain success without jeopardizing one's position - as long as the reporter was seeking alternative means to overcome his problems. Their system encouraged self-criticism, criticisms of colleagues and subordinates.

Upon returning, Vann saw symptoms of the same old problems. There continued to be 'raids' aimed at locations where the V.C. weren't, as well as 'ghost soldiers.' Vann's new closest unit turned out to only have 50 live soldiers, vs. 90 ghosts - funding for the rest was divided up among those in charge. Many VN leaders bought their jobs and needed graft to cover the payment costs. False ID cards and security clearances were also for sale.

'Free-fire' zones were established. A helicopter flying overhead broadcast warnings for citizens to get out or face the consequences. Anyone remaining within the zone could be killed, anything that stood could be leveled. One of the results was a large number of refugees - the official explanation was that they were 'refugees from Communism voting with their feet.'

Westmoreland disregarded suggestions to use Vietnamese in support positions (eg. truck drivers), to form a joint command, with U.S. and V.N. forces intermingled as they had been in some Korean War units, or to do something about the endemic and rising corruption. Part of the problem was that U.S. officers could not win equal acclaim or status at the head of native troops - eg. the commander of Special Forces was always a colonel instead of a general, despite controlling the equivalent in riflemen, etc.

Fourteen thousand, six-hundred and ninety-one Marines died in VN, three times as many as in Korea, but less than the 24,511 in WWII. Marine Lt. General Victor Krulak believed that if Kennedy had lived, he would have forced the Army to fight more intelligently. Rather than attrition via war of big battalions, he preferred controlling key areas and protection of the S. Vietnamese population.

Bottom-Line: John Vann was a small island of intelligence within an ocean of leadership stupidity in Vietnam. Unfortunately, those lessons were not learned, and we've gone on to subsequent debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas within the Middle East.

The title, "A Bright Shining Lie," is perfect because the lie was that we were winning the war against the NLF (Vietnamese Communists) when we were actually losing. And the Bright Shine were the 10 stars on our commander, General William Westmoreland's, shoulders. I was in the Tet Offensive in Saigon and General Fred Weyand and John Paul Vann's awareness of something big about to happen may have saved my life. I've always enjoyed referencing the book. Read it twice, it's a page turner for Vietnam War history buffs. Well written, John Paul Vann was a soldier I had never heard of until the book came out, but may have bumped into him and his team of reporters after the Tet Offensive. One thing, the book could use a last edit due to too many long sentences. It could be cut 25%, without changing meaning; in 2018 it would be written more concisely. It is a great reference book.

So a wise man advised me prior to reading this book to read chapter one last, telling me I should skip it, read through the entire book, and then return to chapter one. Because that man was my father and post advice a deceased Vietnam Veteran, I can't ask him why he told me to do this. What I can say is that following his advice made the ultimate tragedy and beauty of the story told within exponentially more transcendent . This is singularly the best book I have ever read. 20 years later, I find myself making decisions based on emotions and insights inspired by reading this book. Forget Catcher in the Rye, this should be required reading for all H.S. students like forever. Read chapter one last!

You could stack the literature generated by the French and US Vietnam wars - mostly good, often excellent - high and wide on a very large table, the four legs of which would, in my opinion, consist of Hell In A Very Small Place (Bernard Fall), Vietnam (Stanley Karnow), Death In The Ricefields (Pierre Scholl-Latour), and Bright Shining Lie. Apologies to Bao Ninh, whose brilliant "Sorrow Of War" merits equal billing, but its modest size would cause structural malfunction if it were to replace one of the four monsters. "Bright Shining Lie" is the longest of the lot, and its 800 pages are not for the faint-hearted, though neither were the deeds and words of the mercurial, brilliant, brave, reckless, flawed John Paul Vann, both of which Neil Sheehan covers and contextualises so brilliantly. In our instagram age in which men and women of power have their private lives dragged onto the global stage with theatre liights ablaze, Vann's poor treatment of his first wife and family, and of his subsequent Vietnamese and other paramours, would have done for him well before he co-authored (with Fred Weyand) the military defeat of the Viet Cong in the Tet Offensive of 1968, and the defeat of the North's regular army at Kontum in May 1972. It is a credit to Sheehan that his gripping narrative causes the reader to will Vann to succeed knowing full well that those successes served merely to delay the inevitable and prolong the agony. However it is the history of the early years of the US' ill-starred intervention, during Kennedy's "advisory" period and well before the general slaughter of the Johnson and Nixon eras, that the insitutional arrogance, inflexibility and dishonesty of the US military establishment of the time, and the monstrous corruption of its Saigon clients, is mercilessly exposed by Vann's incisive, courageous and hands-on approach to a cause in which he never ceased to believe. The chapter devoted to the January 1963 battle of Ap Bac and its momentous consequences serves both as warning to, and ultimately parable for, the US's entire tragic fourteen year experience. With the benefit of hindsight it would be easy to criticise Vann for not advocating total withdrawal after Ap Bac, however to do so would be to under-estimate just how his generation of bright, patriotic, optimistic American junior and middle-ranking serviceman and journalists covering the war believed in all sincerity that their cause was both just and worth persevering with. After Tet the reader is entitled to be more judgmental. Vann evidently came to terms with the Saigon establishment's venality, and the conclusion we are invited to draw is that because he had so much invested in the war, professionally and personally, his moral compass drifted as his sole aim became its continuation, with himself as one its shining stars, which in military terms he certainly was. His apparent betrayal of his friend and confidant Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) does not make pretty reading. That his unexpected and seemingly karmic death (a narrative highlight) was welcomed by Hanoi with an outpouring of vitriol and barely concealed relief, is testament to the unlikely story of how the illegitimate child of a prostiture from a poor southern family rose to become one of the finest military leaders of the late 20th century. Graham Greene wrote of Vietnam in The Quiet American, "whatever you are looking for, you will find here". John Vann surely found what he was looking for.

The Best Military History book I have ever read. Riveting with incredible details and insights. How could Vietnam have ever happened? This book explains it. The message to me was to not ever let government get too big as it almost invariably turns into a stupid, self serving, self aggrandizing and inhuman bureaucracy. For Vietnam to happen there had to be the enmeshment of Naive government bureaucracy with Military bureaucracy. As I understand it Gen. Westmoreland had the idea that the war would be won by a process of attrition of the North Vietnamese forces. So all the military action seemed to have as its GOAL FINDING the enemy in the Jungle (which was quite difficult) and not letting the enemy Surprise you in the jungle (not very easy.) I salute all the brave American heroes who did the best they could for their fellow servicemen under the terrible circumstances.

There are some really good reviews for this book on the the store web site. So I won't begin to try and compete with these good reviews,I will do my best my giving my thoughts on this book which I came upon in a book store purely by accident. The cover art was attractive and caught the eye, but the deal clincher was the glossary and abstract. The Vietnam War was always a complex issue for me and I really wanted to understand the time line that led to the US intervention in Indo-China. Yes I know that in principle this book is about John Vann, an officer in United States Army, he is good at his job and seems to be unable to suffer fools, especially if they are his senior. However, John Van's private life and the moral compass that guides him through it are askew. Our Author Mr Sheehan, does a very good biography of John Van, but the icing on the cake is the way he interlaces Van's life and career with the history of the conflict, he breaks down common misconceptions, such as the ruling elite in the South of the country were Christian catholic and in the minority, while the majority of the people were Buddhist and disfranchised - something it seems the US never really appreciated in its support of the government of the South. These nuggets of gold and the comprehensive attention to detail were like real revelations for me, and I read the book at pace that I save for very good thrillers. This book is an authoritative account that is well deserving of a good 5 stars.

Fascinating read. Riveting and heart breaking at the same time. LTC Vann was trying to warn the military Top Brass of the doomsday scenario of our involvement in SE Asia with an ally that was never really committed or at least could not get out of the pomp and circumstance of military pageantry to take the fight to the enemy in a gritty guerilla war. The book shows LTC Vann's commitment to the war evenif he was willing to continue to try to make the best of the bad situation. Like many people of history, he is a flawed human particularly in his personal life regarding his marriage, infidelity, and fatherly neglect of his children. Unfortunately in the 10 years in spent off and on in Vietnam only a handful of senior military officers would come to understand what Vann first witnesses in his initial tour in Vietnam. If he could of hit a "tipping point" then maybe history would have been different. Consequently, we don't learn and have repeated many of the same mistakes in Afghanistan particularly post March 2002.

This is the definitive account of the controversial former army officer turned senior development official John Paul Vann, and his efforts in Vietnam. In his Pulitzer prize winning account author Neil Sheehan chronicles the life of Vann, starting as the child of a broken home, through his early career in the US army. Vann was nominated for multiple awards for bravery during the Korean War, though due to vengeful army officers and a cumbersome bureaucracy he was denied official recognition. Later, during the early years of the advisory mission in Vietnam, Vann demonstrated a hard charging attitude bordering on reckless, ignoring the dangers around him and pushing his Vietnamese counterparts to perform. He was also an evangelical proponent of the mission within the military leadership both in Vietnam and Washington. Through his hard charging ways earned him some powerful enemies in the bureaucracy, he also had a growing number of admirers. In no group did he have more admirers than in the press corps. He was often quoted in the leading newspapers, often giving detail about events that directly contradicted what the American leadership in Vietnam or the White House was saying.

Pulling no punches, Sheehan also details many of Vann's personal failings. He had longstanding lovers while maintaining a marriage with a disgruntled wife, often left home alone. There were instances of his fathering children outside of his marriage. And one of his babysitters, under the age of 18 at the time, accused him of sexual abuse. Vann was saved from these career-killing accusations by friends in army leadership.

Eventually given a senior US development position in Vietnam, Vann continued his hard charging ways, which were proving effective. Vann's life came to an end in 1972 following a helicopter crash. Vann has proven to be one of the more controversial figures to emerge from the Vietnam War. Sheehan does an admirable job of portraying this divisive figure. I highly recommend this enlightening book.

Trendy-lefty, biased and inaccurate. Compare and contrast the author's treatments of two incidents during the war. (1) the deliberate planned massacre in Hue during the Tet Offensive of about 5,000 innocent civilians by the VC and NVA (as this was done according to official policy, no one has ever been called to account for it). The author brushes this off as essentially bad for public relations for the VC/NVA. (2) The My Lai massacre of several hundred innocent Vietnamese civilians, an unusual aberration, contrary to strict US rules of engagement, for which many of the guilty were tried and punished for war crimes. Sheehan raves on and on about this and tries to tar the whole US involvement in Vietnam with it. This is just one example among dozens of examples of biased, inaccurate reporting in this trashy book. From one who knows as I served there in 1968-69. Avoid; buy Guenther Lewy's "America in Vietnam" instead or see the other books in my favorites list, "Vietnam -- Can You Handle the Truth?"

I should have read this book years ago. Gave me great insight into the big picture since I was totally isolated as a combat soldier in Viet Nam in 69-70 in I-Corp. I can relate to everything that was written. A must read to understand and learn from military and political incompetence.

It's generally accepted that Vietnam was the first real television war, where images from the front lines were constantly bombarding the senses of the American people. This means Vietnam in all likelihood started the complex and convoluted mind games that governments have been required to play since. In order to meet your aims, as a government, you need to convince your public that the ends justify the means. Showing dead children on television makes that a difficult message to swallow. Enter the Age of Flak.

The reason I open my review with that pre-caveat is because this book is just one version of the US war in Vietnam. There are countless versions retold in book form, and for me to say this one or that one is head and shoulders above or below some other version would be specious, at best, ridiculous at worst. What I can say is exactly what I title this review, this book is an interesting perspective of a confusing war. There are many other perspectives, the vast majority I have never read.

Make no mistake about it, Bright Shining Lie is a great book. It reads well, it's informative, in-depth, encompassing - all you can ask for in a history book. But for me, it's not quite 5 star material. Many people love this book, and indeed, it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 with good reason. But there's something missing in the pages, something a little short of a true classic 5 star book. I will now attempt to explain what that is, not entirely sure I can do that.

The story is in-depth. I'm not about to use the word complete, since a book on Vietnam would have to be 38,000 pages long to be complete, and even then it might come up short. My main problem is the meandering path it leads you down from time to time. I know this approach appeals to some, especially those who dole out the Pulitzer Prizes (see Guns Germs and Steel for another example). Personally, I found the book sometimes lacked focus, and certain sections tended to bog down, suffering from knowing exactly where it was going.

The research was solid, otherwise the book would have suffered. Sheehan had such a wealth of first-hand experience it only follows he would have this aspect nailed. But then, there are instances when too much background is revealed. Having known Vann, Sheehan probably felt the correlation was clear. As a reader, I was occasionally left wondering where the connection was. This leads me to use the word meandering. Again, some readers enjoy the complete analysis, no matter how small and long the adjacent path leads. Personally, I felt too much of the text was a side-story, and not enough discussion was aligned with the aim of the book.

Perhaps there is another contention: The aim of the book. In the second half, John Paul Vann occupies a much smaller role than he had in the beginning. The story, and of course the war being described, took on a life outside of Vann. This is fine. I have no delusions that the war was about one man, especially when he wasn't in the country for some of it. But the title of the book, and how that played into what I was reading...I don't know. Sometimes it was too scattered for my liking. I often wondered where the text was going, why it was going there. Sometimes the questions were answered, other times not.

Some other reviews cite this as a left-wing propaganda piece, which I think is laughable. Other reviews cite the fact that the man, John Paul Vann, was by and large a lousy excuse for a husband and person. While almost entirely true, that doesn't leave the text any less engrossing. Indeed, it probably gives you an idea where Vann's edge came from, and what kind of person he was. He liked to get his way, and generally stopped at nothing to make that happen. But knowing the subject matter, you know how well that worked out.

The book also touches on aspects not directly associated with Vann, which is to be expected in a book about war. The mindset of the native participants is explored, and it gives people like me - with insufficient knowledge about Vietnam - a better understanding of why things went the way they did. I believe this is why people call it liberal. But really, it explains so much more than some off-handed comment that tows the liberal-conservative dichotomy our nation feels the need to be a slave to. Far beyond that, the explanatory power of some of the observations is outstanding.

The book is really good, no doubt. But overall, I found it dragged too often. The book is large enough that you're bound to have low spots - it comes with the territory. But I think it happened too often. I think the book would have been better if some of the sections were shorter, or cut out altogether. Yet, despite these complaints - and I should note these are not condemnations of the book by any stretch - I enjoyed it immensely. It kept the pages turning and, for the most part, kept me interested. For one really good perspective of this confusing war, it is well worth the read.

This book is a very good place to start learning about the history of the US involvement in the Vietnam War. It offers excellent references for further study. Aside from that, this book changed my view of the war in a revolutionary way. I was a career military officer, and I never questioned the story we were told of how the war was conducted. After reading this book; which in my opinion was NOT written from an "Anti-War" perspective; I could not help but question all of the "history" I had hitherto internalized. As a child growing up during the Vietnam War I had rebelled against the "Anti-War" culture that immersed my community. As a result there was a time when I would have dismissed this book out of hand. It now appears that there were voices of warning that I and my country should have heeded. After reading this book, the terrible errors, incompetencies and lack of ethics/conscience that plagued the Kennedy/McNamara/Johnson clique become quite plain. All of this said, the book is not without problems. To this day I cannot fathom the reason for the last parts of the book that chronicle John Paul Vann's private life and his later years. It does not connect with the first half of the book and appears superfluous. To my mind the account of John Paul Vann's womanizing are treated in an almost sensational manner and are ultimately irrelevant. Overall, however, this is one of the few books I have ever read that I could characterize as "life-changing."

Award winning author Neil Sheehan chronicles America's involvement in Vietnam by reviewing the life of legendary soldier, John Paul Vann. How this man, who rose from humble beginnings to become the equivalent of a major general, railed helplessly against the system that constantly proclaimed victory was eminent when the Viet-Cong were making gains daily, indicts American military and political leaders for deluding themselves on what was happening. His gloom-and-doom prophesies made many enemies up and down the chain of command. Unfortunately, he was proven correct.
The story of Vann's childhood shows how this illegitimate son of an alcoholic prostitute became determined to succeed against all odds. It also showed how the seeds of destruction that ultimately ended his military career and his marriage, were sewn. Readers interested only in Vietnam can skip this part.
As a divisional advisor, Vann observed that the South Vietnamese usually avoided contact and always left the Viet Cong with an escape route. Their deficiencies were graphically displayed at the Battle of Ap Bac in 1963. The Army of the Republic of South Vietnam's (ARVN) defeat and America's whitewash of it established the pattern that was followed throughout our time there. Clearly, we were headed for trouble.
Vann was later forced to leave the Army due to a private vice that would haunt him throughout his life. This section shows how child abuse can affect an individual. If you skipped the part on his early life, go back and read it.
As a military and later civilian advisor through AID, Vann never ceased attempting to sell his plan to power-brokers who could change America's tactics and give us a realistic chance to win. His advice was ignored until it was too late. The reader is left to ponder the question, what if this "voice crying in the wilderness" had been heeded? Where would South Vietnam be today?
John Vann's tragedy is America's tragedy as well. Confronted by a political/military establishment that was convinced of its own invincibility after World Wars I and II, he worked tirelessly to show his leaders we could and would lose if radical changes were not made. His futile efforts at preventing that loss is an indictment of the system that failed to heed the warnings of those on the ground who actually saw what was happening. Every student of the war and every military planner should read this incredibly interesting account because, it could happen again.

This is a tremendous and unique book in perspective, detail and size. The book is both an in-depth insight of Vietnam from the pre-WWII period and a bio on the Civilian General Vann who dies in 1972 in a helicopter crash. The author tells the story of Vietnam from Vann's critical bench seat. The author was one of many famous reporters who spent a lot of time in Vietnam such as David Halberstam and Morley Safer. The book starts with Vann's funeral in Washington that includes the highest level of Nixon's defense team along with friends of Vann disillusioned with the war such as the "Pentagon Papers" leak Daniel Ellsberg. Vann is a career Lt. Colonel who retires after serving in Vietnam on a tour as a battlefield advisor in the early 60's. He loved to command combat dangerously from the sky in helicopters to observe the fighting personally and command units directly from the front. Notable for his Korean War exploits, he suddenly resigns seemingly in protest as the military brass creates an illusionary picture of how the South Vietnamese are winning the war. In reality, the South's political generals are for the main part political hacks and corrupt with the regime fearful of going far from their bases giving the initiative to the VC. The title of the book reflects what Vann refers to as the COs in Vietnam's "Bright and Shinning Lies". But Vann's true reason for resignation is not just to protest as assumed by many in the media but it is also a bright and shinning lie as reporters find out years later that Vann resigned due to significant personal issues that may have affected his career. The in depth bio of his youth is told in detail as Vann came from a broken in home in Norfolk, VA. where his mother made herself the priority to the determent of her children. Vann literally is a heroic American story of a man who comes from nothing to a most respected leader in Vietnam. He returns to Vietnam as a District leader in a Civilian capacity as part of a pacification program. By the last two years of his life he is actually a civilian general equal to two stars commanding both American and South Vietnam forces. He emerges from Westmoreland's failed battle attrition strategy to the more successful community based programs of the population intermingled with a reasonable military presence that recruits the community and stops indiscriminate bombing. Toward the end he is virtually the victim of his own success by taking too many risks and his untimely death in 1972 appears to be the final loss and noted faiure of the ARVN units that determines America's abrupt exit from the war. Vann is a unique character that knows and touches every major character in Vietnam from General Harker in 1962 to serving with the disillusioned Daniel Ellsberg. Vann's total dedication to Vietnam was a determent to his American family with an already struggling marriage with numerous personal relations in Vietnam that equal his unique energy' and personal high risk in the field. This is a big book of 800 readable pages. The only thing lacking is more maps and a quick reference page for all the acronyms and character names particularly the Vietnamese that are so prominent in the book. My neighbor that served two tours in Vietnam in the 1st Air Cavalry highly recommended this book.

An absolutely essential book to read, and even with its length, to re-read again, since so many of the lessons that should have been learned were not, and the mistakes are being repeated, as Thomas Ricks has so well documented in his own excellent book on Iraq, entitled "Fiasco."

Neil Sheehan, as a journalist, entered the Vietnam War in the very earliest phases of the American involvement, in 1962. Not long thereafter, he crossed paths with John Paul Vann, a Lt. Colonel, developed an admiration for him because of his frank assessments of the conditions on the ground, which were all too often at variance with his superior's desires and delusions. For the next ten years their paths would cross, and re-cross again, and finally Sheehan visited the grove of trees near Kontum, where Vann's helicopter crashed, killing him and all on board, in 1972. Sheehan correctly saw Vann's life as a meaningful framework for explaining the larger dimensions of the war. Sheehan spent years piecing together the missing and hidden parts of Vann's life before publishing this quintessential account of the war. It is a comprehensive, overall view, covering the historical, political, media, and military dimensions of the war, with an emphasis on the hubris and folly of the enterprise.

Sheehan draws the reader in with an account of the funeral of Vann, in Washington DC. The attendees underscored Vann contacts, and personification of the war, and these including the journalist Joseph Alsop; an old friend, and now a person with opposite views on the war, Daniel Elsberg; General Edward Lansdale, thinly disguised subject of the novel "The Ugly American;" Senator Edward Kennedy; General William Westmoreland; William Colby, former head of the CIA, William Rodgers; former Sec. of State, and Melvin Laird; former Sec. of Defense. A grouping of the "Best and the Brightest" as fellow journalist David Halberstam would sardonically dub them. As an indication of the shift in the popular culture, the classic anti-war song, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" was played. Afterwards there would be a medal-awarding ceremony at the White House, and Sheehan describes the dissension in Vann's own family to this event.

On Sheehan's arrival in Vietnam in 1962 he readily admits that he believed the "party line" of the political establishment of the time, that the struggle in Vietnam was all part of the global anti-communism crusade and a defense of freedom. Although a journalist, and unlike many of his colleagues who viewed themselves as needing to place the proper "spin" on events, when he went into the laboratory, and noticed that the facts were often at variance with the theory, like a good scientist, he decided the theory was faulty.

Concerning the events in the laboratory that changed his outlook: Diem, the South Vietnamese Prime Minister won 98% of the vote; the memorials to the Vietnamese communists who were killed in '55 and '56, allegedly during a time of peace, awaiting the upcoming election that would re-unify the country, sine the Geneva conventions of '54 specifically stated that the division was only temporary; the casual attitude of the American military hierarchy to Vietnamese civilian deaths, as well as the torture of prisoners ("Yeah, war is hell"). One of the biggest specific events that changed his mind was the Battle of Ap Bac, in 1963, two years prior to the commencement of the American buildup. The Viet Cong had, though outnumbered, bluntly whipped the South Vietnamese Army forces. Like Bernard Fall before him, making the observation about Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese on the Communist side had been better motivated, and fought harder than the Vietnamese on the non-Communist side. Sheehan was likewise appalled by the detachment and self-delusion of the American commander, General Harkins. On p 285 he summed it up by saying that: "the dominant characteristics of the senior leadership of the American armed forces had become professional arrogance, lack of imagination, and moral and intellectual insensitivity." Furthermore, Sheehan examines the various structural deficiencies of the leadership's mindset, noting that there were only "progress reports," never "lost way reports." Jonathan Schell noted the same phenomenon in his book, "The Military Half." On the after battle action forms there were no blanks for "civilian homes destroyed." Sheehan reserves a particular animus for Defense Secretary McNamera, a Rumsfeld precursor, who personified hubris. One of my favorite sections has always been when Sheehan tried to see him during one of McNamera's brief visits to Vietnam, and was brushed off with a: "Every quantitative measurement we have shows that we're winning this war."

In the section on "Antecedents to the Man" Sheehan does an excellent job in writing the biography of a profoundly flawed man, John Paul Vann, who was illegitimate, unloved by his mother, and obtained the most affection in his young life from a pedophile. For Vann the Army was the path towards respectability, and Sheehan documents his career from Korea, through Germany to eventually the battle of Ap Bac. Troubles with his superiors over his philandering, and a statutory rape charge were the real reason Vann resigned from the military. There is a wonderful line in the movie Dr. Zhivago that "happy men don't enlist" as others are swept away by war fever. Clearly Vann saw the war as his salvation, and was back in 1965, working for the US agency, AID. For those in a position of power in Vietnam, it was a wonderful place to exercise "sexual imperialism" at the expense of Vietnamese woman. Vann had two permanent Vietnamese liaisons, and many, many flings. In most books this aspect of the war is omitted, so it is very much to Sheehan's credit that he documented another sordid side to the war.

The first 500 pages of the book cover the period prior to the American buildup commencing in '65. But Sheehan saw much thereafter, including being present at the first major US-NVA battle in the Ia Drang valley. The Vann - Elsberg relationship was another fascinating aspect the book brought to light. Sheehan also details the demoralization and deterioration of the Army after several years of the madness of this war, which was one of the reasons why the USA eventually decided to end the war. Another favorite passage is on page 690, concerning My Lai, and it is Sheehan's assessment that it was only unusual in the sense that it was up close and personal, but if this number of civilians had been killed at a distance, over time, it would have been SOP for the war.

Overall, it is a brilliant, poignant account of a very tragic episode in American history that should be read in every school, and by every policy maker. It deserves a 6-star rating.

Neil Sheehan spent a considerable amount of time to write this epic about John Paul Vann in particular and the Vietnam experience in general. He was motivated to write this book after attending Vann's funeral. This book is not for, or against the Vietnam war, but a detailed description and over-view of it, and its developments in the early, middle, and latter stages. It also told of Vann's personal background and professional moves, which were very relevant and interesting.
This book detailed military strategy, current social and political events in N. and S. Vietnam during Sheehan's time spent there. The Vietnam experience can be looked at from many aspects. Many labeled it a "political" war but it was a "bureaucratic" one as well. The Bureaucratic machine operated in very strange ways. High-Ranking officers would make critical decisions, waste lives, and and carry out defeatist tactics and procedures for the sole purpose of getting a promotion called, "getting starred." Self-interests came first in Vietnam on the part of the Military. Harkins, McNamera and Westmoreland, were buffoons who would not listen to factual reports that didn't agree or support their fallacial versions of reality. They were incompetent.
John Vann believed in what he stood for, and for his honestly he was labeled a "maverick" and "trouble maker," which he was not. He simply wanted to win the war, and keep innocent Vietnamese from being maimed and killed. The My Lai massacre was not an aberration; it was the norm. This historical account can give the reader the impression, that although our support for the South was noble, it was a mixture of he Ugly American and Catch-22. This is a fascinating book.

A look at John Paul Vann and his time in Vietnam. The lie is about Vietnam but also about John's personal issues. Well written with an emphasis on some of the tactical issues in Vietnam versus Halberstam's look from a political and people side in "The Best and The Brightest." Both books should be read to give a complete or almost complete look at Vietnam. Each are excellent in different ways.

Highly recommend.

If I were stranded on a desert island with only one book to read about the Vietnam War, Sheehan's "A Bright And Shining Lie" would undoubtedly be it. The book is not a linear history of the Vietnam War but instead tells the tale from one of its most important players and critics, John Paul Vann, who served as an in different capacities from the "advisory" period under Kennedy in 1962 to just after the 1972 North Vienamese Easter offensive, when he was killed in a helicopter crash.

By focusing on a character study, we get a rare glimpse of the "feel" of the war, particularly its early experimental days in the Kennedy years when the most capable military graduates competed for a handful of advisory slots to see real combat. The book has the best description anywhere of the seminal 1963 battle of Ap Bac, in which a VC battalion stood its ground and bested a heavily armed and ponderous South Vietnamese regimental attack. This battle foretold what would follow in other South Veitnamese and American engagements through the disasterous Lam Son campaign eight years later.

As Sheehan sets out his story, Vann was a perfect microcosm of the America's tragedy. He was a hyperachiever and a true believer to the end, never questioning the Cold War premise that the United States had to prevent a Communist takeover of the South, that the war was not an indiginous conflict but agression from without, and that the South Vietnamese could sustain a viable indepdendent political existence. Vann singled out loyal and capable South Vietnamese couterparts to work with, but he was, by the mid-1960s, an island bucking the massive influx of the American sledghammer, "defoliate, deploy and destroy" methods adopted by Westmoreland.

Vann was used and abused by his American superiors. Like his good friend Daniel Ellsberg (whose recent autobiography, "Secrets", tells another angle to the story), Vann reported truth and was ignored. When Vietnamization began in 1969 -too late, too much (useless or unrepairable cast-off materiel), he still remained behind, and unlike the cynical Kissinger-Laird "realpolitik" crowd who were looking only to an exit with a breathing space before collpase (as occurred in 1975)("peace with honor"), Vann sincerely beleived to the end in the moral good of his mission.

Vietnam chewed up thousands of John Paul Vanns. As Sheehan points out, the issue is not whether the war could be one or lost, but the immorality of a system which exploits the idealism and abilities of fine people and covers its tracks with deliberate lies. While all wars depend upon a cerain degree of calculated deception, such deception cannot extend to fundamental premises under which the conflict is being fought, whether one's name in Robert McNamara or Donald Rumsfeld.

Subtitled "John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam", this 1988 non-fiction book won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and I can well understand why. I'm an avid reader of books about Vietnam. However, this 790 page epic, with an additional 70 pages of acknowledgments, footnotes and indexes, makes all those other books seem lightweight. Sixteen years in the writing, every word has been scrupulously researched. Not only are there detailed descriptions of the battles, however. The reader is given the opportunity of looking at the really big picture of the politics of the time. I'm not talking just about the national politics though. There were politics inside the military and between the Americans and the South Vietnamese. We read about real people and the human disaster and the interwoven complexities of waging this war. And, central to the book, we learn about of Lt. Colonel John Paul Vann whose opinions of how the war could be won often differed from those of his superiors. But we learn more than just about his military expertise. We learn about the man himself. We never really like the man. And yet, we do come to understand him with all his warts and demons.

Neil Sheehan was an award-winning Vietnam War correspondent for United Press International and The New York Times. He knew John Vann personally as well as the other military and political leaders mentioned. But he goes much deeper into the character of John Vann, who died in a helicopter accident in 1972, than just his military experiences. He really gets into John Van, the person. And it's in these sections that the book reads like a novel, as we get to know John Vann, the man who could never really escape his early roots. He was born in the South, an illegitimate first child of a mother who neglected her children to the extent that they never had quite enough to eat while she had many gentleman friends and spent money on fancy clothes for herself. Eventually he enlisted in the army. That's where we learn about Korea and the blunderings and mistakes that happened there. I remember learning about this Korean war as a child. But this book really made its folly real to me.

During John Vann's pilot training in the northeast, he met his wife, a respectable young woman from a middle class family. They married young and had five children. But John was a womanizer and couldn't seem to help himself. There were always at least one or two other women in love with him. And that doesn't even count the recreational pleasures he enjoyed in addition. Towards the end of his career he had a daughter with one of the Vietnamese woman he romanced while keeping another woman as a full time mistress. He also often exaggerated his good deeds when it came to his family, always trying to make himself a hero.

This was a challenging book for me to read. There were details of military operation which I had to read slowly in order to understand. But once I got into it, a picture started to emerge. This was a picture of mistakes turned into bigger mistakes, how the world views of the American military created a monster in Vietnam which was a sea of corruption as a way of life. The Vietnamese people suffered the most of all. It was really brutal and there were parts in the book where I couldn't help but shudder.

This is clearly the most comprehensive and best book about Vietnam that I have ever read. I give it my highest recommendation. But be forewarned of its density and appeal to those who want facts and figures along with a very human story.

I think a reviewer has to give this book its warranted praise for the contribution it makes to the history of the Vietnam war. Choosing to write John Paul Vann's history allowed this book to offer insight about the political and military mismanagement of the war which proved to be so costly. The author is also due great respect for the comprehensive research he obviously put into this great effort.
Having praised the book and rated it highly, now let me list a couple of criticisms which may be important to readers looking for something from this book that it may not deliver. First, the book is probably longer than it needs to be to deliver its most important points. I think the author could have been more selective about what he put in the book and trimmed a couple of hundred pages without impairing its value much, if at all. I got tired of reading it, which suggests the writing could have been more engaging, particularly given what an interesting and flawed subject Vann was and how interested I am in this history. In other words, unless you are seriously interested in Vietnam war history, I'd be surprised if you finish this book. Second, I didn't feel he gave as good an explanation as he might have about what was going on around Vann during his final assignment as a civilian "general". In contrast, the author did a great job in this area for Vann's early service as a military advisor.
Overall I'd call this a great historical work which is readable if your interest level is high enough.

Sheehan tells the history of the war in Vietnam paralleled by a biography of one of its most colorful figures, the Army Lt. Col. and later civilian pacification leader John Paul Vann. Regardless of where you stand on this most controversial of all America's wars, this book is a must read to understand its background. Sheehan thoroughly researched the story with interviews of many key players. As a young correspondent he spent several years in country. The book raises many fascinating "counterfactual" history questions: what if military and government leaders had listened to Vann's early (1962-1963) assessment of the weaknesses of the South Vietnamese military and the Diem regime? The only weakness of the book is its abrupt ending. After Vann's death in a helicopter crash in 1972, the author fails to analyze later events including the withdrawal of U.S. troops by 1973 and the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. Writing in 1988, Sheehan should have reflected more on Vann's views and their relation to events that occurred after his death. Nonetheless, a must read for those who want to understand the most divisive war in American history.

This book is part biography and part history. All of it is fascinating. John Paul Vann is a compelling and contradictory personality. He possessed an honesty and clearness of vision missing from so many of his compatriots in the early years of the war. Initially, his story serves as a shining exception to the collective delusions that were shared in the U.S. and Southeast Asia. Eventually though, Vann succumbs to the wishful thinking that pervaded policy throughout the war. The author, Neil Sheehan, excels when exposing that institutionalized "we can win this thing" attitude that sprung from calcified WWII thinking. The chapter "Antecedents to Confrontation" is THE primer on pre-sixties Vietnam history. Somehow, like America's enthusiasm for the war waned, the last chapters of the book kind of peter out as well. I am not sure if this is my sympathetic reaction to the de-Americanization of the war or if Sheehan lost interest, too. But this does not diminish the overall effect of the book. After reading this wonderful history, I will never see foreign policy, war, or the American soldier the same way.

Historical events occur twice, one wooly philosopher claimed. His follower added, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Not true, America's wars suggest. It's tragedy all along, and that's why you need to read or re-read this book now.

The US stumbles, with only the haziest notion of what it is doing, into a grisly war on the other side of the planet. Initially the public goes along but then becomes dubious as the body count mounts, and mounts. Put that way, it sounds all too familiar. But history does not really repeat itself-you can find plenty of difference between the current conflict in Iraq and the Vietnam debacle.

Yet there is common ground: Denial of reality, in the political arena and in individuals' minds, underpins both adventures. That denial leads people step by step into a swamp, as this peerless book demonstrates. Ignorance, delusion, lies, betrayal-all mix together to extend the agony.

Sheehan's brilliant classic reveals the private life of a man as twisted as the war and as dark as the bloodletting, a man at the center of the public spectacle of mayhem and defeat. A man who deceives with the greatest ease, and charms everybody from young schoolgirls to his friend Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, only to betray them without a qualm. The real man is fascinating; as a metaphor of self destruction he burns into one's memory. Go back to this book to see how deceit and illusion can fuel a massive disaster.

The story of John Paul Vann is fascinating. Following the exploits of his life created the framework needed to better explain the history of the war in Vietnam. "A Bright Shining Lie" is one of those books that you wish would continue for another 300 pages. I am a Vietnam Vet. I served in Vung Tau in 1967-68 with HAL-3. USN Helicopter Attack Light Squadron Three. I was a radioman. I communicated with our brave helicopter crews on a single side-band radio. Many of our choppers were shot down and a number of the pilots and crewman were killed. It was a terrible, helpless feeling, listening to someone die over a radio. To know that it wasn't a program but, that it was actually happening. One pilot was shot through a small opening in his protective flight vest. It was not just a lucky shot from a lucky shooter as they flew overhead. No, this Viet-Cong solider had been successfully trained to "lead" the chopper and then fire. That is exactly what he did and his one bullet hit it's mark. I can still hear the panic in our pilots voice. He found it hard to understand what had happened. "I don't get it." he cried "I've been shot." His co-pilot and flight crew tried to help but to no avail...his final word was "Fin." (The End) Everyone in the radio room broke into tears. Most of us in that war were young (19-20) and we believed in the ideals of the "American Way". I made many friends in Vietnam. They were wonderful people who did not want us there. All the wanted was for foreigners to stop invading their land. They wanted to live their lives the "Vietnamese Way." I think Mr Sheehan did a thorough job explaining the causes of this terrible, unnecessary war, and how we could have have managed it with a different and more human strategy. To this day, our country seems to repeat the same mistakes. We all love the USA and think our society is one that the world should want to emulate, but as hard as it is to believe, not everyone in the world thinks that way. Thank you Mr. Sheehan for such a brilliant novel.

John Paul Vann was deceitful, manipulative, selfishly ambitious, driven by inferiority to crave leadership positions, selfish, a sex addict, a serial adulterer, a horrible husband, a lousy father. But, John Paul Vann was also courageous, resourceful, a natural leader, a shrewd judge of others, intelligent, an original thinker, a warrior for freedom, tireless, energetic, and confident.

The author uses John Vann as a metaphor, or type to illustrate America's deepening involvement in the Vietnam war. The metaphor seems to fit well and the result is a good overview of the war and our involvement in it.

The book is well researched and it answered most of the unanswered questions I had about this time in my life (I registered for the draft in 1973). Some of the questions it answered for me were:

How did Ngo Diem come to power in South Vietnam? Was he a good leader or a "anti-communist dictator"? Was the South Vietnamese government and armed forces corrupt? "Corruption" is hard to define, so what are examples of their corruption? Why did our bombing of North Vietnam not tharwt the communist forces in the South? Why were we unable to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail? Were Thieu & Ky good leaders? Why did the Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in protest? Was General Westmoreland a good combat leader? Why did the Marines set up the base at Khe Sahn? Whose ideas was it to rotate the US miliary through Vietnam on one year terms? Did the South Vietnamese really want our help?

My main conclusion from this book is summed up in the old country proverb, "You can't make a silk purse from a sows ear."

Neil Sheehan's book on the experience of John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam is one of the handful of essential readings on that era.
We follow the life of Vann in Vietnam and through his life see the American involvement from a unique perspective. Both as an officer and later a government official Vann was actively engaged and dedicated to the Amercican cause. The contrast between a superpowers strategy and the story of one man's involvement is wonderfully done. Biography, diplomatic history and war intertwine. The story documents the leadership's willingness to believe what they wanted to hear, Vann's attempts to illuminate the realities in the field to them and his struggle to implement what he considered the correct actions.
Sheehan is an excellent writer and weaves a narrative that is informative, exciting and sometimes opinionated. His bio of John Paul Vann serves as the vehicle to expose the hopes and failures of the American involvement.
An excellent telling of an American tragedy, well deserving of the Pulitzer. Highly recommended.

"A Bright Shining Lie" is a brilliant, if flawed, masterpiece. Journalist Neil Sheehan first made a name for himself as a reporter in part thanks to the enigmatic American Hero, John Paul Vann. Vann's story is both fascinating and tragic. His military career was seemingly derailed by his attempts to tell the truth about the war during the advisor period (1962-64), but in fact it was his personal indiscretions that did him in. The book was the work of a lifetime for Sheehan (taking him many years to complete) and it shows. The only problem is that Vann's later career in Vietnam as a civilian advisor (1967-1972) gets the short shrift. Sheehan uses Vann's combat death in 1972 as a metaphor for American involvement in Vietnam. But in fact, by 1972 Vann truly believed that the South Vietnamese were winning the war and had they not been abandoned by their American allies, they might have. Nevertheless, this is a vital book for anyone who wants to understand America's lost war.

All senior managers should be required to read this text - the lesson is that those selected for greatness too early (in corporations or the military) often fail to learn how things actually work in their system. I compared this to my ten years in Shell, where bright people are taken out of the line around 30-34 to work with the leaders of the firm which then cuts them off from where the blood is invested, out in the field.
As a piece of history, it shows how a "can do" culture can so easily march full speed into a deep bottomless bog from which escape is impossible. This applies to both business and the military.
As a case study, Coles Myer Corporation in Australia has the same "can do" culture that shoots first and perhaps thinks second - from my two years there in 1990-1992. Retailers are too easy to draw into a battle where someone else makes the rules and choses the battleground, just as the NLF did in Vietnam.
Read this book if you ever want to manage anything at all well, and despair at what was wasted in terms of people and opportunity Westmoreland and his fellow travellers of defeat.

An excellent, thorough book about the US experience, measured (1) within the larger context of Western colonialism (starting with French, then Japanese, then French colonialism again) and (2) tracking the personal history of John Paul Vann ... whose personal lies and self-delusions mirror those of the US Government during the Vietnam War: an interesting technique.

The favorable reviews (here) of those who were in the fighting and the unfavorable reviews of those who "were there" (but who decline to say what they were doing ... NOT fighting ?) are quite telling.

A long book, well worth reading.

This is one of those books that Vietnam vets insist another one should read; you hear it referenced all the time. It is often a book a caring wife buys for her husband who was over there. Neil Sheehan obviously went through agony remembering all he could when others wouldn't do anything but forget the subject for years. For me, flying helicopters out of Vinh Long in 1966-67, just up the Mekong River from My Tho where Jon Paul Vann, Halberstam, Arnett, and the rest of the Saigon journalists found out early what the war was about, was embracing a legacy these remarkable men laid down. We had all the boys and toys then, but found out later in the Tet Offensive of 1968 how misplaced our ideologies really were. Neil Sheehan stives to paint the picture how all that came about, and has been a healing factor in many VN veteran's lives for this ambiguous information. Once learned, however, it is easily seen what we could not see at the time. A fine piece of work--it'll stand the test of time.

I read this book quite some time ago and several times over. If this book upsets you it is only because the truth can sometimes hurt. I served in Vietnam and I saw things as they were and still do to this day. This book tells it like it was and while some may find it difficult to read, it surpasses other books I've read which attempt to glamorize the Vietnam War and depict soldiers as pure unsung heroes and Rambos for movie scripts. The fact is, they were unwitting victims of a faulty government policy and The Wall in Washington, D.C. is graphic evidence of their sacrifices and their slaughter by our misguided politicians and military leaders. I am another disgusted Vietnam Vet, but for different reasons and this book explains those reasons as well as any. This book is a must read for anyone who really wants to know and/or really cares to understand what happened with Vietnam.

My husband, a Vietnam veteran, read this book and recommended it to me. I'm glad he did! It is a wonderful explanation of the stupidity of those in charge of our policy during that time period. John-Paul Vann may not have had all the answers but he certainly saw that what we were doing was not the answer and had viable suggestions as to what might have worked had the policy been implimented immediately. I'm not saying the U. S. was wrong getting involved in Vietnam (although, after reading this book, I'm not sure we were right, either); I am saying that the policy of those people who were charged with winning that conflict was a policy guaranteed to bring about the most destruction, the most loss of American lives, and the least co-operation by the Vietnamese peasants as possible. This book sheds a lot of light on what the news media was trying to say and why the public didn't understand what the news media was trying to say. Excellent book!!!!

This book is a very good place to start learning about the history of the US involvement in the Vietnam War. It offers excellent references for further study. Aside from that, this book changed my view of the war in a revolutionary way. I was a career military officer, and I never questioned the story we were told of how the war was conducted. After reading this book; which in my opinion was NOT written from an "Anti-War" perspective; I could not help but question all of the "history" I had hitherto internalized. As a child growing up during the Vietnam War I had rebelled against the "Anti-War" culture that immersed my community. As a result there was a time when I would have dismissed this book out of hand. It now appears that there were voices of warning that I and my country should have heeded. After reading this book, the terrible errors, incompetencies and lack of ethics/conscience that plagued the Kennedy/McNamara/Johnson clique become quite plain. All of this said, the book is not without problems. To this day I cannot fathom the reason for the last parts of the book that chronicle John Paul Vann's private life and his later years. It does not connect with the first half of the book and appears superfluous. To my mind the account of John Paul Vann's womanizing are treated in an almost sensational manner and are ultimately irrelevant. Overall, however, this is one of the few books I have ever read that I could characterize as "life-changing."

Sociologist C.Wright Mills once wrote that the key to meaningful social analysis was to understand the actions of an individual in the context of his or her social situation, to place the person in a historical context so as to better appreciate the aspects of the social environment that motivate the individual to act and react in a particular way. Thus, to understand the actions of a middle aged German Jew in the context of the 1930s, one must understand the nature of the Nazi society he lived his daily routine within. Here we can observe how brilliantly this principle can be used with journalist Neil Sheehan book, "A Bright Shining Lie", a book in which he not only tells the story of a single man, John Paul Vann, but also explains the history of American involvement in Vietnam. This is a marvelous tale of a modern tragedy, not only for Vann himself, but for the American people and of course, the poor Vietnamese, who had nowhere to run when the bombs started falling.

Vann began his involvement with Vietnam as an Army Lt. Colonel. Because of both some personal troubles and his outspoken criticism of the ineffective and unnecessarily cruel way in which the war was being conducted, he was in effect cashiered, and he returned briefly to civilian life back in the United States. Yet Vann couldn't help but be drawn back into this country he had fallen in love with while doing his initial military tour. He found the opportunity to return to Vietnam as a civilian supporting the American military mission, and threw himself into the opportunity with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. He seemed to have an almost instinctive understanding of how to conduct an effective counter-insurgency operation, and based on his tireless efforts and his success in pacifying the area he was assigned, he gained increased credibility and influence within both the American military as well as the South Vietnamese government, and as a result became much more influential and powerful.

Yet in the moments of his success Vann began to fatefully turn away from precisely those perceptions regarding the nature of the conflict and the need to be effectively engaged at the micro-level, and he, like many other individuals prosecuting the war, turned to more traditional and massive intervention techniques such as carpet bombing, that were not only indiscriminate, but also tended to be counterproductive in the longer term. Vann's slow but inexorable corruption by power and influence is a familiar tale, and indeed sadly documents one specific example of a widespread phenomena which continues to this day within our military; that of careerism. It is easy to understand how the quest for rank in order to do what one believes is right gets twisted into an eventual accommodation with the very devil one is combating in order to get ahead.

Of course, once makes the necessary accommodation to succeed in a military career by mindlessly following orders, then when the particular officer eventually succeeds in getting promoted (by going along with the wrong-headed policies of his or her superiors) he or she becomes exactly that corrupted and compromised type that he or she was originally so motivated to replace. This, then, is the true tragedy of both John Paul Vann in particular and the American Army in Vietnam in general. In my humble opinion, everyone in the officer corps shared this dirty little secret of co-option that made each of them, to some degree, at least, un-indicted co-conspirators in a quite deliberate and systematic campaign to murder countless men, women, and children in living in nameless hamlets and villages in Vietnam. Of course, I am not alone in this view, and former officers such as Col. David Hackworth and Lt. Col Anthony Herbert have written poignantly about this very subject. This is a wonderful book about a terrifying truth, and one all Americans should read to understand the true dimensions of the tragedy in Vietnam.

This book is very well written and fascinating to read. Much of it reads more like an historical novel because so much detail is given, including what people were wearing, what they said, how they felt, and the scene. There are many conversations with direct quotes that are surely not verbatim quotes, because nobody was there recording the actual words said. The book is anti-war and anti-American. Well, people who agree with Sheehan might say it is not anti-American, it is anti-Truman, anti-Eisenhower, anti-Kennedy, anti-Johnson, anti-Nixon, and anti-most-of-the-people-who-worked-for-those-presidents. Sheehan is definitely more sympathetic to Ho Chi Minh and the government of North Vietnam than he is to President Ngo Dinh Diem and the subsequent leaders of South Vietnam and the top American generals, SecDef, and diplomats. He catalogs the various torture methods used by the ARVN and makes it clear that the torture methods and murdering that they did were not even well-designed to achieve the objectives of the government. In contrast, he admits that the communists used some torture and murdered some people, but the torture was against official policy and was better targeted towards achieving the communist objectives. And it is not really anti-war. It is sympathetic to the communist decision to go to war and opposed to the American and South Vietnamese decision to go to war.

There are several themes that recur again and again. The Government of South Vietnam and its army (ARVN) were terribly corrupt at all levels. It was mostly bribes, but it was also selling things that were given by the United States, collecting pay for soldiers that were no longer in a unit, dealing in marijuana and heroin, and prostitution. The ARVN lacked courage and saw the communist soldiers (Viet Cong and NVA) as superior fighters. President Diem wanted to avoid ARVN casualties because he was obsessed with avoiding a coup and he feared that too many casualties would result in a coup. Diem, a Roman Catholic, had no regard for the Buddhists and was unfair towards them. The South Vietnamese and American leaders were constantly doing exactly the wrong thing to win the war. Generals Harkin, Anthis, and Westmoreland were careless about the use of artillery and bombing. John Vann was continually unfaithful to his wife, but apparently none of his girl friends were married. He told women all of the worst lies to get them to have sex with him. In contrast to his personal life, John Vann had high integrity, courage, and principles in his professional work as a soldier.

The book has an introduction followed by seven “Books.” Most of the reviews neglect Book V – Antecedents to the Man, so I will start with it. It turns out that Sheehan is an authority on the history of the South, how most of the people who settled it were either black slaves or British criminals who were exiled to the American South, often instead of being hanged. This is to explain Vann’s roots. It really doesn’t add anything to our understanding of Vietnam, and I would like the book better if it had been omitted. Then he describes Vann’s ancestors, aunts, uncles, and half-siblings, mostly by describing their vices and failings. It feels pornographic. You might object, that it is not pornographic. But it describes Vann’s mother as a self-centered drunk and prostitute who emotionally abused her family and neglected the needs of her children. Sheehan describes a time when Vann was a young teenager. He and his best friend saw Vann’s mother having sex with a client in a car. Vann joined the Army Air Corps, washed out of pilot training because of a dumb stunt, became a navigator, and got married to Mary Jane. When the Air Force was formed, he chose to stay in the Army because he thought the career potential of a navigator in the Air Force was not good. He was in Japan when the Korean War broke out. A big reason that North Korea started the war was that Truman said he would not defend North Korea. The reason that North Korea was so successful in the first couple of months of the war was that the Army generals failed to keep the men organized, trained, and equipped after WWII. MacArthur was a vane idiot to invade Inchon because it has great natural defenses. Vann finally became commander of a Ranger company. Back in Japan, his son Jesse came down with meningitis and Vann was sent home to Japan, then they were transferred to Ft Benning. Starting with his return to Japan, Vann started philandering, and continued at Ft Benning, and Rutgers, where he taught ROTC and worked on his bachelor’s degree, and Germany. Vann was repeating the behavior of his mother and his biological father, Johnny Spry. Mary Jane knew, but kept silent, mostly. The stories are sordid and Vann did not have the slightest sense of guilt or shame. Finally, he was charged with statutory rape of a fifteen year old girl. He was undoubtedly guilty but beat the rap. However, the record that he was charged with this crime stayed in his personnel file and guaranteed that he would never be promoted again. This is the offense that is mentioned obscurely at the end of Book IV.

Maybe all of Book IV is true, but I am uncomfortable with the negative descriptions of Vann’s mother, biological father, adoptive father, and other family members, because most of these people are dead and cannot defend themselves. At the end of the book, Sheehan lists the documents and interviews that he used in his research. Most of the living relatives of Vann are included. Most of what they told Sheehan about Vann’s mother and the others is probably true, but it doesn’t do anything to help us understand Vietnam.

The Funeral. Sheehan starts with a clever device to introduce many members of John Paul Vann’s family and prominent military leaders. He describes Vann’s funeral, describing each family member, journalist, and government official. He tells the order that they arrived, what they wore, where they sat, what they said, and what they did. For some, he goes into some detail on their relationship with Vann and why they were present. One of Vann’s sons was anti-war. He tore his draft card in two, put one half in Vann’s coffin, and planned to give the other half to President Nixon, but was persuaded not to.

Book I – Going to War. This “book” is about Vann’s arrival in Vietnam in March, 1962. Vann was a very capable lieutenant colonel and was quickly put in a position of great responsibility as adviser to the commander of the ARVN 7th Division, Col Huynh Van Cao, ahead of more senior officers. Sheehan describes Vann as very wise, brave, energetic, and having exceptional integrity. Diem was singularly concerned with staying in power, staying alive, and avoiding a coup. This led him to carefully avoid the kind of military operations that would effectively destroy the communists but might also cause high ARVN casualties. Government strategies (maintaining small, vulnerable outposts) allowed the guerillas to capture large quantities of American arms and ammunition. Vann used good intelligence gathering methods to determine where the communists were, and planned good operations to kill them, but the ARVN commanders would not spring the trap, for fear of ARVN casualties. Vann opposed the way artillery and air power were used because they caused too much collateral damage, but could not get the Air Force commander, General Anthis, to pay attention to him.

Book II – Antecedents to a Confrontation. Reviews Ho Chi Minh’s efforts to free Vietnam from French rule after WWII, establish a communist state, and re-unite the country after it was partitioned in 1954. The U.S. supported the French when they re-occupied Vietnam after WWII, paying 80% of France’s Indochina war expenses by 1954 (page 172). After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the U.S. backed the partitioning of Vietnam and the establishment of Ngo Dinh Diem as president in the south, and would not permit an election to unify Vietnam. The Americans did not understand Vietnam and thought that it was similar to the Philippines, where there was a Roman Catholic majority and the government was able to defeat the Hukbalahap rebellion. (page 132) Racism influenced American policies during WWII and in Indochina during the post-war period. (page 153) After Vietnam was partitioned in 1954, the government of North Vietnam murdered thousands of non-communist politicians and landowners. (page 167-173) General Giap confessed to crimes – killing honest people and torture came to be regarded as normal practice. (page 174) In the south, Diem returned land to large land owners. In 1955 he ordered the Denunciation of Communists Campaign. Torture and rape were used to produce names. Those named were arrested and most of them were killed. (page 184) At least 50,000 were sent to concentration camps. (page 188)

Book III –The Battle of Ap Bac p201. The battle was on January 2, 1963. In most of the battles planned by Vann before this, the ARVN soldiers enjoyed much success, often by attacking with M-113 armored personnel carriers armed with a .50 caliber machine gun. The communist soldiers would panic and run from their positions, exposing themselves to ARVN fire. Ap Bac was a disaster for the ARVN and a great victory for the communists. There was a communist radio transmitter at Bac and soldiers to defend it. The communist officers were expecting an ARVN attack and prepared well by digging fox holes along the base of a tree line. The ARVN airlifted soldiers to Bac in H-21 helicopters. Later in the day the M-113s attacked, and near the end of the day paratroopers were dropped. Everything went badly for the ARVN and went well for the communists. Vann and the other advisers had a good plan and as problems developed they had good solutions, but they could not get the ARVN officers to do what they needed to do to win and the ARVN noncoms and soldiers were cowardly. The communists were brave, held their positions, downed five helicopters, killed many ARVN and three Americans, and escaped during the night. Diem and General Harkins, the top American general in Vietnam, wanted to fire Vann because he spilled his disgust and contempt for the ARVN to the reporters, including Sheehan. Harkins was then persuaded that Vann’s excellent relationship with the reporters would cause too much trouble if he fired Vann. Of course, Cao (now a general) said that Vann was the root of the problem.

Book IV – Taking on the System. “The American reporters shared the advisors’ sense of commitment to this war. Our ideological prism and cultural biases were in no way different.” Page 271. Book IV picks up with the aftermath of the Battle of Ap Bac. Vann was determined to fix the problems he had seen – to get the ARVN officers to implement more effective battlefield tactics and to reduce collateral damage done by artillery and bomber aircraft. General Harkins really believed Cao when he said that the battle was a victory for the government forces. After the battle was over and the communists had withdrawn from Bac, Cao told Harkins that the communists were still in Bac and he was sending troops to surround Bac and trap the communists. Vann and the advisors working under him wrote a massive account of the battle of Ap Bac. Porter added his own brief summary and gave it to Harkins. Sheehan takes a tangent to summarize George Patton’s career and to contrast him with most of the Army leaders in the sixties. Page 284-287. Sheehan takes a lot of these tangents but he is skillful in the way he starts them and then brings the reader back to the main story. He takes another tangent to describe reporter David Halberstam in minute detail – his parents and grandparents, how he talked, what he ate, how he dressed, where he went to school, his previous career. (page 318-322) One might wonder why so much detail on a fellow reporter. It bolsters Sheehan’s credibility, I suppose. He knew everything about a famous reporter in Vietnam. When Vann had completed 12 months in Vietnam, he was reassigned to the Pentagon. He gave his briefing to anyone who would listen, including a few generals. He got himself scheduled to brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but was taken off the agenda hours before it was to happen, when General Krulak finally had a chance to read the briefing. It was all about how Diem and the ARVN were not doing at all well in the war against the communists – contrary to what General Harkins was telling everybody. But Vann’s point of view got a big boost when Henry Cabot Lodge became the American ambassador to Vietnam. Lodge read Halberstam’s newspaper accounts of how badly things were going for the Diem government, and started maneuvering to get Diem replaced. Lodge kept his intentions secret from Harkins, who was still sold on the belief that the war was going well and that Diem was the best man for the job.

On page 342 is the quote of Vann that gives this book its name. “We had also, to all the visitors who came over here, been one of the bright shining lies.”

Until we get to the end of Book IV, we are thinking that Vann resigned from the Army in protest, because he was not allowed to brief the Joint Chiefs on what was really going on in Vietnam and because he could not change the prosecution of the war. That is the impression that Vann gave to all the reporters in Vietnam and all his friends. But at the end of Book IV we learn that he had some offense – probably a court-martialable offense – on his record that would prevent him from being promoted again. Sheehan knows exactly what the offense was, but does not tell us until the end of Book V.

Book VI – A Second Time Around. Vann returned to Vietnam in March, 1965 as an Agency for International Development employee. He authored a paper on how to win the war – Harnessing the Revolution. He advocated the United States seizing authority over the Government of South Vietnam and effecting social reforms. There was a huge system of graft and corruption that could only be overcome if the Unites States seized control. District commanders kept many more soldiers on their role than they actually had, by counting soldiers who had deserted, died, or gone over to the communist side. The Government would send pay for the missing soldiers, which would be pocketed by the commander. And contractors would submit bills for material that had been given to them. At all levels, a portion of the illicit profit would be paid to the next higher supervisor. ARVN commanders had a habit of firing artillery randomly and unobserved. That is, there was no spotter calling in corrections to aim the artillery. Vann hated this and succeeded in stopping it in his district for a while. Besides the homes that were destroyed by artillery, many homes were burned. In 1965 the war was not going well for Saigon. Westmoreland was now in command, and he started asking for more and more American troops to take over the war and destroy the communist forces. Sheehan goes off on a tangent about the Battle of Ia Drang. It has nothing to do with Vann, but it was an important battle – the first really big battle where an American regiment was airlifted by helicopter into Viet Cong territory. Sheehan got there on the second or third day of the battle. Sheehan just does not exercise much care in editing this book. He just includes everything that seems interesting to him.

Throughout the book Sheehan repeatedly downplays the importance of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which runs from North Vietnam, through Laos and Cambodia, to South Vietnam. In Book II he says that most of the rifles and machine guns and their ammunition used by the communists were stolen from ARVN outposts or bought from ARVN sources on the black market. Heavier artillery and mortars were shipped by sea from North Vietnam to the south. They used boats that blended in with fishing boats, moving at night and hiding by day.

Vann’s assistant, Doug Ramsey, was captured by the Viet Cong who took him from one place to another, finally inside Cambodia. They were sure he was CIA, but he wasn’t, and when he denied being CIA, it made his interrogators all the angrier.

Book VII – John Vann Stays. Vann began a friendship with Daniel Ellsberg, who had a house next door to Vann’s in Saigon. The theme of Vann’s philandering is picked up again. He acquired two girlfriends, Lee and Annie. Both were far younger than he, and he was able to keep them unaware of each other. Lee aborted two of Vann’s babies. Annie aborted one of his babies, then insisted on carrying one to term. Annie’s family had a pseudo “marriage” ceremony for Annie and Vann to keep their respect. Vann insisted that Mary Jane would not allow him to be divorced and could not have a real wedding with Annie. In October, 1966, Vann was appointed the director of the Office of Civil Operations for III Corps, based at Bien Hoa (p 614). As hundreds of thousands of American troops came to Vietnam, there was enormous construction of new bases, seaports, airfields, barracks, post exchanges, ice cream plants, and warehouses. This employed tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. Vann got a new ally when Victor Krulak, Commanding General of Fleet Marine Force Pacific, adopted Vann’s point of view that more pacification and less attrition was needed. The Marines were deployed in I Corps, the northernmost five provinces of SVN. Krulak’s boss, Adm Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, and Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Wallace Greene Jr., agreed. (p 630) But Westmoreland didn’t want pacification, he wanted attrition – killing communist soldiers. Krulak managed to brief President Johnson on the need for pacification, but Johnson didn’t understand or agree. Major General Lewis Walt was the Marine commander in I Corps. Walt tried to slow-roll Westmoreland, keeping a substantial portion of his Marines working on pacification. Westmoreland could see what Walt was doing, and in September, 1966, ordered the dirt airstrip at Khe Sanh expanded to support C-130s and ordered a battalion of Marines there to defend it. Krulak objected, but Westmoreland insisted. The Marines were Westmoreland’s bait to lure the NVA. As we see later, the NVA who attacked Khe Sanh were bait to lure the Americans away from the cities, in preparation for the Tet offensive of 1968. Westmoreland was not as clever as he thought he was.

In May, 1967, McNamara told Johnson that he could not win the war and he ought to negotiate an unfavorable peace. He did not state it that bluntly, but his recommendations implied as much. Johnson sided with Komer, Rostow and Rusk and rejected McNamara’s recommendations. (p 684-5) Several months later Johnson arranged for McNamara to be appointed president of the World Bank, a way of letting him go as SecDef. Clark Clifford became the new SecDef. The massacre at My Lai, near Quang Ngai, occurred on March 16, 1968. (p 689) Jonathan Schell had previously briefed McNamara on the violence towards both Viet Cong and civilians in the province. (p 687) The Army investigated Schell’s claims and found them to be “overdrawn” but “substantially correct,” and pointed out that the civilian population was very supportive of the Viet Cong.

Sheehan summed up his view of Westmoreland: “It has been a historical characteristic of generals like Westmoreland that whatever they are given—keen soldiers, innovative weapons, timely intelligence, discerning counsel, published primers on an opponent’s strategy—they will waste. They expect their enemies to behave stupidly, and they perceive their own behavior as farsighted generalship.” (p 693) I can only guess who are the “generals like Westmoreland.” Probably Harkins, maybe MacArthur.

The account of the Tet Offensive begins on about page 700. Westmoreland saw the Marines at Khe Sanh as bait to lure the NVA. Sheehan says that the NVA sent two divisions to attack Khe Sanh a few weeks before Tet, and they were bait to lure the American troops into I Corps, away from the cities, to prepare for the Tet Offensive. That is probably largely true, but two divisions is a lot of men to sacrifice as a lure. Just before Tet, Westmoreland also wanted Weyand to move troops in III Corps away from the cities, towards the Cambodian border. Weyand had intelligence of a build-up and suspected an attack on the cities, and resisted Westmoreland, who relented. Weyand’s prudence may have saved Saigon from being entirely overrun by the communists. The Tet attacks began on January 31 at 3 am. In the afternoon, Vann took time away from his duties to try to rescue Annie, her grandmother, and their daughter. They had already been rescued by Annie’s parents, but that did not keep Vann from making up a story about how he rescued them. After Tet, Vann saw that an enormous number of VC officers, NCOs, and men had been killed, and he saw it as an opportunity to clean up the corruption in the Government of Vietnam, transfer most of the fighting responsibility to the ARVN, reduce the number of Americans in Vietnam, and win the war. (p 725) In June, 1968, Westmoreland was “kicked upstairs” to Army Chief of Staff and Creighton Abrams replaced him.

There is rather skimpy coverage of the war following the 1968 Tet Offensive. There was a constant reduction in the number of American soldiers in Vietnam. By the time the Easter Offensive started in April, 1972, there were no American combat units in Vietnam. Only advisors to the ARVN, a few U.S. Air Force, and support troops. By 1972, Vann was to top American commander in II Corps. He was a civilian, but filled a Major General billet. He bravely and energetically directed the defense of Kontum, but made some mistakes. He put his main force, 10,000 ARVN, in the defense of Tan Canh, with no possibility of orderly retreat if they were overcome by the communist forces. It was a “gamble of the highest order.” (P 763) Sheehan becomes unclear at this point. It seems that the 10,000 defenders were soundly defeated, but it is not clear what became of them. Sheehan does say that the communists paused for 20 days before advancing to Kontum, losing the opportunity to take Kontum.

On page 784 Sheehan starts a rant on how Vann was doing the wrong things. “Vann did not see the fallacy of his victory.” (Victory referring to the successful defense of Kontum.) One of Sheehan’s beefs here was that Vann had seized complete control over directing the ARVN. Another beef seems to be that Vann saved Kontum from being overrun – Sheehan would have rather have Kontum overrun and a complete defeat of the Saigon government. “Nor did it occur to him [Vann} that he might be playing the role he and Fred Weyand had played at Tet – postponing the end.”

The book ends abruptly on June 9, 2972, when Vann died on an evening helicopter flight from Pleiku to Kontum.

If you are looking for a book that takes every possible opportunity to criticize the Government of South Vietnam and American role in Vietnam, and praise and defend North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, this is your book. It is over 800 pages long and covers a lot of things that don’t need to be in the book.

For a more fair and concise book, read Summons of the Trumpet by Dave R. Palmer. It also has an account of the Battle of Ap Bac. The two accounts of the battle mostly do not contradict each other, but it is clear that Sheehan goes with the reports that Vann and his subordinates gave, and Palmer draws on other sources, probably the Saigon government and Cao. Palmer says that 36 VC were captured, which Sheehan does not mention. Palmer gives a somewhat lower number of ARVN killed, and almost three times as many VC killed, using the official Saigon numbers. On page 85 of Palmer’s book, it tells the story of a NVA defector who carried two mortar rounds from North Vietnam to South Vietnam. A mortar crew immediately fired them and told him to go back for two more. Sheehan tells the same story but claims that it is fiction, that heavy ammunition such as mortar was delivered to SVN by boat. Palmer also says that ocean going boats were a major means of delivering arms and ammunition, but also says (p 85) that starting in February, 1985, “Market Time” was established to interdict these shipments, something that Sheehan does not mention.

I liked this book, not because I favored one point of view over another, but because it is packed with facts and provides insight on facets of the war that are largely neglected. Well indexed, extensively sourced, large bibliography. When I first read it twenty-some years ago, the book kept my attention through all 861 pages.

I was recommended this book by an officer at the ROTC office at my alma mater. The title didn't sound promissing, but I took the officer's word and got the book. Of all the books I've read on Vietnam, this is by far, the most moving book I've ever read.
The book focuses on one person, John Paul Vann, his childhood and family history, his marriage, his military service, his second tour as a civilian. William Blake wrote that one can see a world in a grain of sand; If you want to see a piece of America, if you want to see the Vienam war in the eyes of a person that fought in it, if you want to see what was it in that war that infuriated, that raised emotions, that drew people in, that readied them for the ultimate commitment, get this book and read it.

A sweeping, first person account of America’s early years in Vietnam through the life of a key American. Non-fiction reads like fiction. Fast paced chronicle by reporter recognized for his seminal work.

This is an excellently researched book and it is obvious that Mr. Sheehan thoroughly knows his subject. As other reviewers have noted the book ends when J. Vann dies and doesn't delve into the issues surrounding the winding down of the war. But, I don't think that detracts from the quality of the book. The only thing I was dissapointed in was that the writing was at times a little sloppy. This is surprising given the length of time Sheehan spent writing it and his experience as a journalist. I guess ultimately this indicates a weak editing job. But, this shouldn't stop anyone from reading it. What Sheehan does do well is present a balanced view of the issues surrounding the war interwoven with specific details from Vann's past that provide a good flavor for what the war was like.

Neil Sheehan does an amazing job with this book. In my experience (for what that is worth), books by journalists often tend to lack depth--both analytic and empathic. Sheehan does not have this deficiency. This volume certainly deserved the Pulitzer it won. I have no doubt that John Paul Vann is the perfect focal point for the story of America's involvement in Vietnam--he was young, idealistic, committed, unaware of his own shortsightedness, and, both knowingly and not, part of a great big lie.
It is amazing that, after the passage of nearly thirty years, the existence of a myriad of analyses of the quagmire of Vietnam, and the silent witness of a black granite wall in Washington bearing over 58,000 names, we still refuse to learn the lesson that the world is not as simple as we might like it to be, and that it is not so easily remade in our image.
This book is a must-read for anyone starting to engage the subject of the Vietnam War, and, more generally, for those interested in how good intentions can go bad (and bad intentions only get worse). In addition, I would recommend Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly."
On a final note, those with a taste for cinematic adaptations of non-fiction might be interested in the made-for-cable movie from the 1990's of the same title. I thought it left some things to be desired, but it was, all things considered, a fair treatment of the book

Had it not been for the movie it was the basis for, I would never have learned a Big slice of the truth about Vietnam, and I'm thankful I found a softbound copy of this for just the equivalent of US$4.95 in Philippine pesos last year.

A Bright Shining Lie is the life story of John Paul Vann, one of the most controversial, yet indispensable, figures of the Vietnam War. What's more epic about this book is that the one person who knew him real well from Vietnam took SIXTEEN LONG YEARS to write, collated from a large collection of sources dating back to the war: taped interviews, printed materials (including the Pentagon Papers), and experience from being a UPI war correspondent.

Neil Sheehan did a commendable job by compiling all the facts about John Vann's early life: his being born out of wedlock, a literal SOB, and his experiences at Ferrum, to name a few were all good parts to read. He was also able to shed light on the stories about his relatives, and how they all connected with Vann's.

Aside from what I've read in other books about the Dien Bien Phu siege, Bao Dai and the rigged elections of 1956, I did not learn more about the early history of the Vietnam War until I read A Bright Shining Lie. Once again, in the chapter "Antecedents to a Confrontation", Sheehan's star shines as he detailed the history of Vietnam's struggle for independence and resistance to foreign domination (by taking note of some of Vietnam's early heroes such as Nguyen Hue), starting from the Chinese, all the way to the Japanese, French, and later the Americans. It was in this book that I first learned that the term "Viet Cong" was actually American-made, and Edward Lansdale, the man behind Ramon Magsaysay's success in the Philippines, had a role in placing Ngo Dinh Diem as South Vietnamese leader, thinking he could repeat what he did in the Philippines. The passages about the Denunciation of Communists campaign in 1955-56, the near-draconian rule of the Ngo Dinhs, plus the endemic corruption, and discrimination of other religions and people in the rural areas (no thanks to Diem's usage of his Catholic friends as administrators) further undermined Diem's ability as a leader for the Vietnamese people, and he was obviously ignorant of the signs.

The Battle of Ap Bac, the major skirmish that brought the Vietnam War to a whole new level, has an entire chapter devoted to it, and narrated in exquisite detail on both sides, and included a map Vann wanted to use in briefing the Joint Chiefs.

The battle, it's aftermath and the repercussions from it, gave Vann the ammunition he needed to confront the senior military leadership on how they ran the advisory effort in Vietnam. He knew what was wrong and made it his mission to make them understand, but the passion with which he pursued his goal was paid in full by a lot of frustration when, due to some politicking by officers who didn't like Vann, he was denied the chance to brief the Joint Chiefs just when he was already at their office, ready to go.

I would have loved to add more of my thoughts about such a riveting book as this, but I've ran out of things to say. Hopefully I can add more later..

Great book!

I think my summary above says it. I am an amateur Vietnam War Historian with a sizable library of tomes. My library includes virtually all non-fiction -- from personal experiences of Vietnam Veterans to works on the historical and political origins of the struggle by the Annamese peoples to throw off centuries of foreign domination. Sheehan's book is a must read about Vietnam. It ranks right up there with the best of them, e.g. - "The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam, "Vietnam, A History" by Stanley Karnow, and another must-read from the most decorated Vietnam Veteran, David Hackworth, "About Face."

The definitive book on America in Vietnam, in my opinion. Read it from cover to cover, and you will understand the depth of America's problems in Indochina. The unwinnable war.

And the book is worth reading again, especially now, when America and her allies find themselves deep in the quagmire of another war with an invisible enemy. The parallels in rhetoric alone left me speechless. As for the futility and loss...

Vietnam was a complex and divisive war, one which has had longlasting effects on American culture. Our longest conflict, it was an epic struggle in which the US tried to prevent the southern half of the country from being unified with the Communist north after the departure of the French in 1954. In doing so we ended up propping up a corrupt south that was badly fractured by ethnic, political and religious rivalries. Through the character of John Paul Vann, who came to Vietnam as an Army advisor in 1962 and was finally shipped home in a coffin after he repulsed a large North Vietnamese force in 1972, Sheehan reveals the tainted struggle over Vietnam that he witnessed as a journalist and as a close friend of the brilliant, brave and fatally compulsive Vann.

of a psychopath. Many psychopaths lead wasted lives at public expense in prison after years of crime, substance abuse, predation, and betrayal. But every so often, one comes along and finds a niche to make a net positive contribution to history, even as he hurts those closest to him. Such a man was John Paul Vann. As hero or anti-hero, he comes to life in this magnificant story of intelligence and stupidity, courage and folly, daring and cowardice, optimism and blindness. This book blends a powerful narrative built around this admirable and contemptible figure to make vivid an historical episode from which important lessons will be learned for years to come. Whether as biography or history, Sheehan's story makes compelling reading, and delivers as few books at any time, on any topic. This is a great book.

As a student of history with a passion for military history (especially of the Vietnam War), I was very excited about reading this book and very satisfied overall.

To tell the story of John Paul Vann, from both the good and bad sides, requires that the book explore the Vietnam War history as well. Sheehan carefully balances depth of material with a general theme of a historical overview. It makes for a compulsive story, as the "big picture" historical events unravel and de-tangle as Vann's life and role is explored.

The story of Vann is as compelling as any run-of-the-mill Vietnam War service memoire and the historical overview is compelling without being dry or cumbersome. Most refreshing is Sheehan's point of reference, being neither politican nor soldier, it makes this history worth reading if only for the different point of view.

The story of Vann itself is very interesting for any student of the Vietnam War, but I'd also highly recommended this book for anyone who wants to read a good history of the Vietnam War from a non-military/non-politician point of view. Those who are serving or have served would do well to check this out, especially in light of current events. There are some great lessons in here. For the non-military, it's a great overview of the Vietnam War and gives a window of insight on reporting and political ideas during a war such as Vietnam with disturbing parallels to the present.

Having served in Pleiku for two years (4/68-4/70)in the II Corps Interrogation Center as an MACV Team 21 advisor to the ARVN, I turned two days ago to the last third of the book that has been in my library, untouched for years, to read about Vann's time as II Corps Advisor after I had left Pleiku. This was all I planned to read. But once I started I could not put it down --going to sleep was difficult.
Mr Sheehan has performed a critical service by exposing how our system operated, and he has been justly recognized for it. I think Mr. Sheehan's readers can confirm what they probably already suspect: That all "great powers" operate like this -- from the beginning of time, and I'm sure to the end. The US was, tragically, no different than the English, Germans, French, Spanish, Medieval Popes, Chinese, Arabs, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, you name them at their respective heights. The difference, which I believe Mr. Sheehan was telling us, is that in our relatively free and democratic system there is a greater likelihood that the truth will be communicated in an unvarnished manner, and acted upon, but this did not happen in Vietnam for the many and varied reasons so vividly explained by Mr. Sheehan. What is so incredibly amazing, and I think a tremendous strength in this book, is how close one man, John Paul Vann, got to making the truth crystal clear at a high enough level where it might have done some good at the crucial time just prior to the beginning of the US military buildup. Think about it -- a lowly Light Bird Colonel ready to give the briefing of his life at one of the highest policy levels, and it was stopped only hours before the dam could have been burst.
One area I was hoping Mr. Sheehan would cover was the number of deaths our 30 year involvement in Vietnam led to, which I believe is perhaps as many as 2,000,000 Vietnamese, out of a population of perhaps 16,000,000, or an equivalent of nearly 35,000,000 Americans. Whenever I hear people talk about our 58,000 plus dead or our MIA (and I cried at The Wall last year suddenly and unexpectedly), I cannot help but think of the millions lost by an incredibly brave people - a people who fought the Chinese for four thousand years and who (nearly) all cried when Ho Chi Minh died -- right in the middle of the war!
Mr. Sheehan made me think and feel deeply about my two years in Vietnam for the first time in many years. I remember very clearly my Vietnamese counterparts (but I only remember two Americans by name, Captain Matz and Lt. Gerber), and I often wonder what happened to them -- I wrote to Ha Van Cuong until 1973 when Pleiku fell and then communications ceased.
I deeply respect a system which allows a literary and reporting genius like Mr. Sheehan to educate us and thereby improve our chances that such a human disaster will not happen again, at least not on our American watch, for however much longer we will hold this top dog position. At the same time, I believe it is true, as historians tell us, that they need about 50 years before they can get a good grasp on the significance of an event like our involvement in Vietnam. There is still much we do not know as regards how our involvement in Vietnam may have had an impact in China and Russia that helped avoid an even larger conflict. I hope that the many who served in Vietnam who need some societal support to accept their involvement will eventually learn that their experience is being viewed by future historians in a more positive way. And I wish the Vietnamese their well-deserved place in the world as a people who truly understand the word FREEDOM.

Great Definitive History From An Author Who Was On The Front Lines With Us Reporting Back To This Country What Was Occurring On A Daily Basis. This Book Is An Work That Is Compiled From Over @ 20 Years Of Covering This Event From The Beginning to The End. Thank You Mr. Sheehan We Know You Were There.

Mr Sheehan has done a fantastic job on a work which is complex and deep in its content. It is readable, yet it does require more than just a glance at its passages. For someone who is a "gen x'er" who was not "conscious" of the events at this time, this book taught me alot about why people are concerned today about "another vietnam." More books should be written in this style-- that is for a history of a period to be centered around a key figure like JP Vann. This work is very valuable.

I am a young guy so to speak, at age 27. So I haven't read a lifetime of non-fiction. But this is the 2nd best, and a close 2nd at that, non-fiction book I have ever read. Second only to "All the President's Men." I think this book took 16 years to write, and the effort and diligence show. A wonderful lesson for me, on the real vietnam conflict. Maybe one of three books in the last 10 years that I literally couldn't put down. Sheehan really puts value in the endless but relevant details he has researched, and skillfully puts them together in a way that answers the most confusing foreign policy puzzle of the last half of our century.

John Paul Vann was a man who rose from incredibly humble circumstances, enduring a childhood that would have given Charles Dickens nightmares, to become a real leader and force in American involvement in the Vietnam war. Whats more, Vann seems to be one of the few, the VERY few, that seemed to understand just what was going on there. The book could have used some editing, and the writing was a bit sloppy at times, but Sheehan gives us an insight, through Vann, of the war that wrecked the American Military's reputation for nearly a decade after the conflict ended. Had America followed Vann's advice, we might have had a different ending to the conflict Highly recommended!

When ever I am asked the question... what is your favorite book? I have but one single answer... A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan. This is outstanding biography, history, and adventure story. So well written that you just do not want it to end. And no other book buts the whole Vietnam experience into better perspective. I own a first edition, and read it when it first came out in 1988... and ever since then, have felt it was, for me, my favorite.

A lengthy but involving account of the career of John Paul Vann, a US Army officer and latterly a civilian adviser with the Agency for International Development (AID), who died in a helicopter crash near Kontum, Vietnam in June 1972 (generals Westmoreland and Stilwell both attended his funeral, as did Robert Komer and William Colby of the CIA). Vann attracted attention early on with his outspoken comments about the South Vietnamese military after the battle of Ap Bac in January 1963, the author being one of the journalists who interviewed him on that occasion.
Successfully combining biography and history, this in fact goes further and includes a lot of useful background material as well. An impressive achievement, one of the better books about the Vietnam War.

This lifts the lid on the systemic corruption and "progress reporting farce" by Saigon HQ, the madness of the rationalists, and the failure of the American leadership and military bureacracy in Vietnam, who only got the tactics right when it was all too late - even though they had them recommended to them repeatedly. The truth was there, but the ability to handle it was lost in arrogance and exaggeration. ...Masterfull, superbly written, by the journo who was the Wikileaks of his time. The parrallels and personalisation of this book's take on the Vietnam war is poignant and makes the reader clutch it close. Once Vann took his Highway to a War there was no turning back. A book that will stay with you for life.

Being in my early thirties, as with most of my peers, I did not learn much about Viet Nam in school. This book sheds "a bright shining" light on the (mis)information and (un)intelligence that involved the United States in a "war" we had no business being a part of. This book provides a great deal of history about Viet Nam's struggles against "occupiers" from ancient China onward and a first-hand view of what was going on in there during the turmoil. There is a LOT of information in this over-700 page book, but it's worth the read and the attention one must pay to all the details.
It's also a good example of how out nation's leaders and military officials blindly engaged in war based on ego. It makes one hyper-aware to what's going on in the world now and how history could very well be repeating itself.
Om shanti.

Like some other reviewers here, I read this excellent diagnosis of the USA's involvement in SE Asia about twenty years ago. Sheehan lays it on the line, as the title alone divulges. I have several American friends who were actively involved in that debacle (almost all of them describe the Vietnam War in those terms) and I respect soldiers who do their duty, as these did. I have similar respect for the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (the most bombed country of all time) who did not deserve (imho) the murderous intervention of American "advisors". But hardly any for a government which sent its own people to kill and be killed for "A Bright Shining Lie" as Sheehan shows it to have been.
There are people here giving this outstanding book five star reviews, as I believe it deserves. Some say the motivation is so that such a thing may not happen again. A very praiseworthy motive, but one that seems to ignore the last 15 years or so of history and the American "War on Terror". I'm given to understand that the current death toll in Iraq alone is 1.5 million, mostly civilians, to say nothing of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and so on, with probable future bombing of Iran, a country that has not waged war on anyone for about 100 years. Dare one mention "oil"? dare one mention America's "special relationship" with Israel?
Dare one hope that Sheehan's thesis will be heeded in these days?
It doesn't seem so to this reviewer, but I would hope to be proven wrong.

I read Neil Sheehan's book many years ago and it was one of my favorite books then. It won a Pulitzer because Mr. Sheehan writes well and knows his subject. He worked in Vietnam as a reporter, was a Pentagon correspondent for the NY Times, chose John Paul Vann, a very interesting person to write about, and chose a popular topic, the US failure to achieve a military or political victory in Vietnam.

If you really want to find out why the US had no chance of defeating the communists then I suggest you read: Intervention--How America Became Involved in Vietnam by George Kahin, a deceased professor of history at Cornell. I discuss Intervention below. Before I do so, I point out:

US actions, understandably were motivated by anti-communism (China had become Communist and Communism was appearing in many parts of the world including Europe). Unfortunately this did not reflect the nationalism of the Vietnamese people, both North and South. The South Vietnamese wanted reunification with the North just as much as the North Vietnamese people wanted reunification with the South. The US, at the highest levels (President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK), President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), President Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara who was JFK's and LBJ's Secretary of Defense, Dean Rusk who was JFK's and LBJ's Secretary of State, McGeorge and William Bundy, Walt Rostow, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, etc.--practically all senior leaders except George Ball, Undersecretary of State under LBJ and General Mathew Ridgway, Army Chief of Staff) in its anti-communism fervor chose to fight a war that the South Vietnamese did not want. The South Vietnamese Government was highly influenced by the US. Some might even argue that South Vietnam was a puppet state of the US. The vast majority of South Vietnamese were Buddhists and the US did not want to work with the Buddhists because they were seeking reunification of the North and South. The US feared that reunificiation would result in a communist Vietnam. Professor Kahin states that ninety percent of the Vietcong (South Vietnam communist fighters) were recruited from South Vietnam and not North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese did not want to fight either and would not have if there had been reunification elections in 1956 pursuant to an agreement forged between France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV--North Vietnam), whose military arm was the Vietminh (Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh--League for the Independence of Vietnam) at a 1954 Geneva Conference. This Conference, comprised of the major Western European powers, including France and Britain, as well as the US, China, and the Soviet Union, took place to discuss many political issues. South Vietnam, with US support and backing, reneged on the agreements reached at the Geneva Conference on July 20 and July 23, 1954. The US had not endorsed this agreement, which was tied to the armistice between the French and Vietminh after the fall of France's fort at Dienbienphu in North Vietnam.

Intervention--How America Became Involved in Vietnam, is based on three sets of the Pentagon Papers, thousand of documents the author asked the US Government for under the Freedom of Information Act, and numerous interviews with civilian and military leaders of Vietnam and the United States.

Reading the Notes significantly adds to understanding the thesis of the book.

The author writes clearly. It is somewhat slow reading because it is as scholarly as a book can be. I do not discern much bias.

The book documents everything. US State Department memos and cables, National Security Council directives and reports, US Congressional reports, Joint Chiefs of Staff documents, political journals, etc. comprise the sources of this book, titled Intervention--How America Became Involved in Vietnam.

This is a spectacular book. Told by the experiences of a Vietnam War veteran and what he went through in the war. It also goes into the reasons why we fought in this war and the lies that our leaders did. This was truly a gruesome war with a lot of remorse. It is a sad story, the war itself. It is the first and only war America lost and we had 60,000 troops that lost their lives in this war. I do recommend this book to people to have a deeper understanding of this war.

This book is a mix of both good and bad. It is good as a history at explaining the life of American patriot John Paul Vann a hero and like all of us a flawed man. It is from 1945 through the day of the relief of CG MACV Westmoreland a fairly accurate appraisal of events. However, its coverage from early 1968 through the death of its protagonist John Paul Vann during the Easter offensive of 1972 at best a flawed book. And what I mean by that is that it hypes American atrocity while omitting the fact that by 1972 the USA and our South Viet allies were victorious in the people's war phase of the Vietnam War. We had beaten the insurgency the VietCong were all but destroyed like some kind of dragon that was once thought to have a thousand lives and live forever. A Bright Shining Lies fatal flaw is that it stops suddenly in 1972 when their was still 3 years of savage fighting left. It doesn't tell that the reason South Vietnam slipped under the communist tidal onslaught, like it was the Titanic, in 1974-5, was because the US Congress under the steering of Sen. Edward Kennedy cut off the funding. It doesn't tell how more people died in South East Asia after 1975 than died in the previous 10 years of fighting.

If you want the truth of what happened in Vietnam by a soldier and historian who was there read Westmoreland and A Better War by Dr. Lewis Sorley.

It's easy to get taken in by the written word. It has some authority just being there. The power of the truth, however, shines through after awhile, and you realize that what you are reading is substantially correct, especially after checking the bibliography. Neil Sheehan appears to have the test of time on his side. And if this is true, if what's described in this book is in fact how it happened, it should be required reading of everyone with any authority to commit American lives to any cause, from the President on down. The enormity of the ego-driven stupidity of a few men, from Harker to Kennedy, from McNamara to Westmoreland, from Johnson to Nixon is enough to make one sick with rage. For those of us who have spent time at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, reading names and letting the vastness of it engulf us, the realization of why it is there is almost too much to bear.

This is without doubt one of my favorite books - particularly the way it shows both sides of the same man. In one half I was highly impressed and somewhat in awe (not something I do easily or often). But in the second half, the author portrays a man who I found I truly disliked. We all have a Good, Bad and an Ugly side to our personalities. In this book we get to see all facets of John Paul Vann, an American hero and villan.

Neil Sheehan doesn't pull any punches in his tale of John Paul Vann and the Vietnam War. I was originally given this book as an assignment in a college class on the Vietnam Conflict and found myself sucked into the narrative from the first page.
Sheehan describes Vann's interactions with the local Montignards and the US Military Assistance Command in detail. Blunt and brutal...this is the REAL story of what happened including information on Laos, Cambodia, and the atrocities of the Viet Minh.
Sheehan even touches on My Lai and the events leading up to and immediately following. From the French occupation through the US withdrawl this narrative follows our involvement at an unparalleled depth. No wonder it won a Pulitzer.
A must read.

Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" is a compelling story focused on how one man lost sight of a truth the nation was struggling to come to terms with. Not only does Sheehan take us deep into the life of a complex man with amazing clarity and a strong sense of balance, he does so in a fashion that makes it a real "page-turner".
Despite his numerous character flaws, the reader can't help but feel sympathy for Vann. He gave his life to the military and to a conflict he had once thought unwinnable, but at the terrible expense of his relationship to his family.
If you are looking for a great read about the Vietnam War, I strongly recommend "A Bright Shining Lie".

A Bright Shining Lie is a true story about a man named John Paul Vann and America's involvement in Vietnam. The author, Neil Sheehan, was a war correspondent for the United States Press International and the New York Times. His book in 1989 was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. The book starts out at Lt. Col. John Paul Vann's funeral in 1972, ten years after he arrived in Saigon, after a helicopter crash back in Vietnam. His story shows America's failures and disillusionment in Southeast Asia. In 1954, the French were defeated, Vietnam then was divided by Ho Chi Minh's Communist North and the Southern regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. Vann had an opportunity to go to Vietnam and he took it right away because he wanted to fight his way up the ranks. When he arrived he was teamed up with South Vietnam's Colonel Cao. Right away Vann notices the corruption of the South Vietnamese regime and their incompetence in fighting the Communists. Sheehan shows this throughout the book with many examples of what the South Vietnamese did. Colonel Cao was shone taking pictures of his men pretending to be dead VC's (Viet Cong) to impress the higher officials and to show that we were winning the war. The South Vietnamese army did not know what they were doing and lost many battles. As Sheehan graphically describes the battles, the Viet Cong are winning them, but that is covered up by South Vietnam and America portraying them as being the supreme force. Vann secretly told reporters how the war was a waste and Neil Sheehan was one of these reporters. The peasants in Vietnam were caught in the middle between the North and the South. We gave the peasants guns then they were seen used by the Viet Cong in battle. Sheehan noted that the corrupt South Vietnamese did not care for the peasants and carpet-bombed their villages because of known Viet Cong inhabitants. This whole book is based on Vann's telling the self-deceiving illusions of the American military and civilian bureaucracy. Vann was sent back to the United States after the army found out about his meetings with reporters. America hid the truth throughout the whole war. He then resigned, but could not stand not be in on the action. Sheehan said, "The war satisfied him so completely that he could no longer look at it as something separate from himself" (745). Later Vann was able to get a position as a civilian aid and went back to Vietnam in 1965. This is when Sheehan depicts another corrupt South Vietnamese soldier. Colonel Dinh, he resisted America's help in the war. He killed his own soldiers, did not want to help the villagers in any way and destroyed their villages. Vann's main goal was to stop this and gain the villagers trust. He ran pacification programs, mobilized allies among South Vietnamese forces, coordinated America's support and had many theories on how to turn the war around. Sheehan also wrote detailed descriptions of John Vann's family and the struggle he had with it during the war. From this the reader is able figure out why Vann always cheats on his wife. His mother, Myrtle was like this and it was a hard subject for John to talk about. In Vietnam Sheehan tells about two secret lovers of Vann. He could not control his sexual compulsion. His military career was almost ruined years earlier because of his affair with a babysitter. Sheehan writes a lot about Vann's character flaw. His wife divorces him later because of this. He was able to get all of this information with interviews of many people while his time in Vietnam as a correspondent. Vann wanted things to be done his way, he wanted to win. Sheehan said, "He was not supposed to accept defeat" (269). Sheehan talks about Westmoreland, the Commanding General in Vietnam and how he believed that the Viet Cong would not attack Saigon during "Tet" the Chinese New Year in 1968. Vann believed that they would and they did. Vann helped lead the fight against the VC and they were successful. Vann took a position in the South Vietnamese army. He served as general in command of the Central Highland Regime. President Nixon had ordered U.S. combat troops out of Vietnam in June of 1972. The U.S. said it was the South Vietnamese war and they are giving them more control. Sheehan in the story points out that the South Vietnamese had little interest in the war in the first place. Vann in 1972 had his coordinates in Kontum carpet-bombed by B-52's to try to wipe out the second, the third and the fifth divisions of North Vietnam. This was a big risk Vann was willing to take, because of the corrupt Dinh who changed orders and they were forced to retreat into a mine field as VC's advanced forward. Sheehan points out that Vann had a different outlook on the war. He was concerned now about his fighting and not the peasant revolution. Earlier he was bothered that, "...the United States could generate an astonishing reaction from the peasantry once corruption was eliminated and the American millions were getting down to the poor instead of being siphoned into the feeding trough of the Saigon hogs" (539). John Paul Vann soon died in a helicopter crash during a rain storm, ten years after he first arrived in South Vietnam. The biography by Neil Sheehan was very detailed about the war the way John Paul Vann experienced it. First as an Army Colonel and later a civilian pacification leader. Sheehan's book clearly shows the corruption of the South Vietnamese regime, their incompetence to fight Ho Chi Minh's Communists and their brutal alienation of their own people. Vann was able to bring these secrets out to reporters like Neil Sheehan to inform the public of what was going on in South Asia. This brings up the question that what if the military and government leaders had listened to Vann's earlier assessments of the weakness of the South Vietnamese military and the Diem regime? What would have been different? This book was very well written and brings much of the war right out into the light. If the reader does not have much knowledge of the war in Vietnam, this is the book to read. Vann personified our good intentions, our courage, our arrogance and are folly in the war. There is one shortcoming of the book. The book ends after Vann's death in a helicopter crash. The reader is left there wanting to know more about the events in Vietnam after his death.

This is a great book. Sheehan uses the story of an exceptional individual as the basis for writing a history of a good chunk of the Vietnam War. It is extremely insightful and authoritative, since the author was there and knew Vann. I would highly recommend reading Secrets, by Daniel Ellsberg, and seeing the film version of this book, starring Bill Paxton, for further depth on the topic. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

OBSL should be required reading in high school.
This book is exceptionally well researched.
I just cannot say enough about it.
READ "One Bright Shining Lie", it will forever change your opinion of the Vietnam conflict.
If you thought "The Best and the Brightest" was good, well, you ain't read nothing yet!

I am a young Vietnamese, imigrated to America in 1992. I saw many terrible things that the VC have been done in my native country. Although I haven't read the book but I saw it on TV. My father was a officer of SouthVietnamese army in central highland. I heard about Mr.Vann when he based in Banmethuot and Dalat(close to Kontum which is mention in the movie). My father said that his colleages also agreed that Mr.Vann was one of few good man, who want to win the war in Vietnam. SouthVietnam was decided into 4 regions to easy control VC. If each had one like Mr.Vann then the southVietnam wouldn't fall into VC and so American, we wouldn't lose the war.

If wants to really see the spectrum of what went on in Vietnam and written in can't-put-it-down style, this is the book for you. I lived through these times as I graduated college in 1964. Being in the Peace Corps 64-66 and coming back as a teacher I was very much anti-Vietnam War. The author captures a lot of the feeling I had

This book should be standard reading for all officers at the Army War College. The book does more to illustrate the folly of fighting the new war using the last wars tactics. Vann sees in 1962 what the Pentagon crowd didn't see until 1972. This book, paired with Colonel Hackworth's "About Face" changed my opinion of what went wrong in Vietnam by 180 degrees. The story reads well as a history and as a biography. This is a book that is hard to put down and even harder to stop thinking about long after it's finished.

Compare Sheehan's ultra sympathetictreatment of the communist killing of 5,000 innocent civilians in Hueduring Tet 1968 with his trashing of every soldier who served in Vietnam in his account of the My Lai massacre. Awful. How it won prizes is a disgrace. Signed, disgusted Vet.

I read this book a few years ago and the only significant thing I can remember clearly is the way John Paul Vann dies. That's because the author's bitterness toward the military colors everything he says. Endless criticism of military officers. But little criticism of the Presidents who ordered those officers to do what they were doing and say what they were saying. In fact, in the author's mind it was the Generals running the show and poor Kennedy and McNamaara and Johnson were their puppets. Isn't it nice to have a scapegoat to yell about when your political heroes have dragged the country into a 10-year nightmare?

From the eyes of a Vietnam vet, this book is an unbelievable revelation. I am only part way through the book but it offers a clear explanations of the political missteps that led to the Vietnam Memorial. It offers a view of the same myopic political vision (shared by most western politicians apparently) as Kai Bird's book, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate delves into in the Middle East.

Neil Sheehan has managed to create a comprehensive and engaging examination of the Vietnam War in A Bright and Shining Lie. And after many years (16+) researching the subject and interviewing the key figures in the war, Sheehan ought to be commended for both a thoroughness that is rare and an effort that went beyond the call of duty.

****BEWARE SPOILERS AHEAD****

I will start with the positive. If you are looking for a fairly comprehensive look at the Vietnam War, and wouldn't mind tagging along side one of the more famous American soldiers (John Paul Vann), then look no further. In movie scene fashion, Sheehan begins with Vann's funeral, then takes the reader back in time to the beginning of the war. Thus, the first couple chapters - "Going to War" and "Antecedents to a Confrontation" - introduce some of the main characters and also cover the birth of the American commitment to the Vietnam War. The book builds up to a powerful climax in the chapter entitled "The Battle of Ap Bac." This chapter provides insight into the problems experienced during the early years of the conflict, and offers a "would-have-been" solution. "The Battle of Ap Bac" was one of the best chapters in the book - well worth the read. In fact, from what I saw online, The University of Richmond used to offer a class that would have its students do a full analysis of this chapter of Sheehan's work...fairly impressive! Chapter IV is a summary of John Paul's fight against the early-war military policies instituted by Maj. Gen. William Westmoreland. Of course, up to this point the book offers an unstained characterization of John Paul Vann - a characterization that is to be questioned as his outlook changes and his private life is exposed. In "Antecedents to the Man," the fifth chapter, Sheehan embarks on a journey to discover John Paul Vann's interior through an exposé of his childhood and subsequent adulterous pursuits - an ineradicable image of John Paul sleeping with a teenage girl is revealed as Sheehan describes the rape allegations that almost led to John Paul being court-martialed from the Army. The final chapters bring the reader back to Vietnam for the Jungle War years of 1965 - 1968, and the bitter end from 1969 - 1975. It is amazing how well John Paul Vann fits into the historical breakdown of the war. Sheehan was definitely right to pick Vann as his main character. Further, Sheehan's knowledge of principal figures and power politics is astonishing, and it isn't surprising that he spent sixteen years researching and writing this book! Being a Vietnam journalist, he offers a unique perspective given his enduring presence in Vietnam for the events he covers.

Having properly laid out the bones of the book, I wish to mention some small gripes that come to mind after working my way through this immense volume. I got to the end of the book and it hit me right away: what the heck happened to Douglas Ramsey (Vann's right-hand-man in his AID post in Hau Nghia who was captured by Viet Cong guerillas and taken through some of the most brutal jungles imaginable)? Close to the end of the book, page 787 to be exact, we hear that Ramsey has entered "his seventh and last prison," but whether he died or was rescued is never mentioned. It was rather short-sided not to wrap up that loose end on page 787 when he easily could have. Additionally, the will that Vann manages to scratch on some paper prior to his helicopter crash is described thoroughly on pages 771-72, 775, and 786; yet Sheehan fails to tell the reader how it was discovered, and why it was disregarded when it was discovered. Furthermore, we are never told what happened to Vann's would-be second wife Annie and their child Thuy Van. Not to mention the lack of coverage of the wars final three years - Sheehan opts to leave that to the imagination since Vann died on October 9, 1972 and the war ended three years later on April 30, 1975.

Nevertheless, my biggest gripe is that this book could have been properly wrapped up in 400 pages or less. The twofold proportion of the book adds little to its content - merely 400 pages of Sheehan\Vann insight into indiscriminate war tactics by the American and ARVN military systems. This wouldn't matter much if the insight was useful, but Sheehan negates the insight he gives in the first half of the book with a 180 degree approach in the later half of the book. Granted, Vann changed his position after the Tet Offensive in January of 1968, but Sheehan still doesn't have the right to point the finger both ways - if anything you might as well just call the war into question at that point. And by the way, calling the war into question is one of the few positions which eludes a full scale analysis in Sheehan's book, but any serious minded reader is doing exactly that by page 790...so why not just state that position on page 1 and carry a single sided view throughout the book?

Finally, I should mention that the author uses the word "Catholic" as liberally as any journalist, which isn't surprising - the main stream media knows little to nothing about Catholicism and almost always uses a biased approach to analyze it. Unfortunately Sheehan doesn't even offer a biased approach; instead he slanders the Catholic religion by using the word "Catholic" in a derogatory sense throughout the book (unnecessary to say the least!).

All in all, even though A Bright and Shining Lie has its flaws, it is a serious book that should be taken seriously by anyone interested in the Vietnam War. I give it three stars for comprehensive scholarship and an unmatched insider's perspective.

If you want to understand Iraq, or war in the modern age in general, I think you must read this book. Most wars are simply unwinnable -- as that term is commonly misunderstood in Hollywood terms. WWI and WWII were the exceptions not the rule. Where an when you must fight an unwinnable war, it must be by necessity and with a clearly defined objective and exit strategy. This book illustrates these lessons vividly through the life, courage and devotion of a little known and less understood and altogether mystifying and facinating true American hero. Even if you are not so interested in the politics and the present day relevance, it's still one great read.

I SERVED UNDER "VANN" IN PLEIKU WHEN HE WAS KILLED.AT THE TIME HE WAS THE CLOSEST THING TO A HERO THAT WE HAD. HIS RESCUES WERE SOMEWHAT FAMOUS. THE BOOK SHOWS LIKE OUR EFFORTS IN THE WAR HE WAS ALSO FLAWED.I THINK THIS BOOK CAN ANSWER THE QUESTION THAT VETS AND NONVETS HAVE ABOUT OUR FAILURE DESPITE A GALLANT EFFORT FROM OUR TROOPS. THE WAR WAS DOOMED BY THE FAILURE OF OUR LEADERS TO RECOGNIZE THE TACTICS OF OUR ENEMY WHO SAW MILITARY EFFORTS AS SUBORDINATE TO POLITICAL GOALS.THIS BOOK SHOWS THE THINKING AND TACTICS WHICH DOOMED OUR EFFORTS

Through LTC John Paul Vann, Mr. Sheehan tells the story of the Vietnam War, particularly as it relates to the United States. He does an excellent job of recounting the events leading up to the war in Vann's life and the prior history of Vietnam.
Unfortunately, the book is HIGHLY biased. Sheehan goes to great lengths to condemn the actions of the United States and South Vietnam. The pages ooze with tales of incompetence, corruption and evil intentions of the West. However, the evils of the Communists are usually not mentioned or are glossed over. As an example, Sheehan dismisses the North Vietnamese massacre (about 10,000 dead)of whole villages in 1956 as part of an agrarian reform plan as "an unfortunate mistake".
I would recommend this book. However, readers should remember Mr. Sheehan is not neutral on matters.

I must admit I gave this book away because I found it too disturbing to see on my shelf! It is a superb chronicle of the Vietnam War, and asks more questions than it answers. You can't really ask for more.

The Bright Shining Lie is a good book with a lot of truth about the VN war but it is just one man's truth.
Lots of details about the failings of the US & South VN leadership and S.VN armies. Not a lot about the North VN or the rest of the participants. According to Vann, the North VNese and himself are the only people who knew how to fight this war. A quarter of million of S. VNese soldiers died in this war. Did he think they all died with their tails tucked between their legs?
What about all the S. VNese generals (at least 5 that I know off), colonels and countless other soldiers who committed suicide at the end? Were they cowards as well?

I must admit I gave this book away because I found it too disturbing to see on my shelf! It is a superb chronicle of the Vietnam War, and asks more questions than it answers. You can't really ask for more.

The Bright Shining Lie is a good book with a lot of truth about the VN war but it is just one man's truth.
Lots of details about the failings of the US & South VN leadership and S.VN armies. Not a lot about the North VN or the rest of the participants. According to Vann, the North VNese and himself are the only people who knew how to fight this war. A quarter of million of S. VNese soldiers died in this war. Did he think they all died with their tails tucked between their legs?
What about all the S. VNese generals (at least 5 that I know off), colonels and countless other soldiers who committed suicide at the end? Were they cowards as well?

Too many accounts of this war (and some other reviews on the store's pages) call the war an American disaster or an American tragedy.
This is like calling World War Two a German disaster or a German tragedy.
The US war against Vietnam was a crime, a war crime, a crime of aggression.
Sheehan's book is a wonderful study of the way the US fought this dreadful war, and of one officer's attempts to fight the war better.
So it is just like one of those books that portrays a 'good Nazi', like Rommel or Guderian, who opposed the way Hitler fought WWII.
The US ruling class who committed the crime of aggression against Vietnam fooled themselves, and others too, that theirs was some noble mission, to save other nations from communism. In fact, their crime resulted in the killing of three million innocent Vietnamese, who were killed trying to save their country from a savage, unjustified and illegal assault.

A must read for those who want a clear, balanced and well researched book on this important event in American history. Using John Paul Vann, who's life would have made an interesting biography in itself really compliments the book and gives this history a human quality, well written and easy to read makes it hard to put the book down.

The story of a true American hero. One of the most facinating books on the Viet Nam Conflict. John Vann stood up for his beliefs and wouldn't let the U.S. military stand in his way. This book illustrates, with the subtlety of a sledge hammer, the commitment of a man to apply all means to shorten this war, and emerge victorious . This is a well written book you won't put down.

There has been much written on the Vietnam War, some of it too soon after or during the event to be either objective or accurate. Some scholarship is outstanding: Murphy's book on the Battle of Dak To, the superb We Were Soldiers Once and Young by Moore and Gallagher, one a commander on the ground, the other a journalist who was present at the action chronicled, and Summons of the Trumpet by Dave Palmer, a noted author, combat soldier, and later Superintendant of the US Military Academy at West Point. Unfortunately, I don't think this volume quite cuts the mustard. The author's methodlolgy bothers me somewhat: equating the American policy in Southeast Asia to the personal morals of one man involved in the conflict, albeit over quite a long period. In doing so, the author leaves out the contributions of too many, putting a blanket of flawed character over the entire venture, when many, if not most, who served there in that longest of American wars were men and women of character, attempting to do their job tho the best of their ability, almost 60,000 not coming home and later having their names placed on The Wall in Washington DC, two of which belong to my brother and my cousin. It is here that I object to both the author's premise and his objectivity. Finally, in the last chapters he attempts to chronicle the Battle of the La Drang Valley in 1965. I had read other versions of the fighting and after reading this one, thought I had read of an entirely different action. I do think the author erred here, especially after reading We Were Soldiers Once and Young, by General Moore, who commanded one of the squadrons there, and by Gallagher, a journalist who went through the fighting with the troopers of the 7th Cavalry. These two, in my opinion, major errors in the book make it a flawed chronicle at best, and not the best tome to rely on about the War in Vietnam.

This book served as a great introduction to the complex issues facing U.S. forces in Vietnam. After the recent attention to civilian suffering in Iraq, you are staggered to read about the extent of devastation of the Vietnamese population during the war. A fairly long book that breezes by.

Neil Sheehan is a journalist. As such, any historical undertaking at which he throws himself should be approached with a hint of enthusiasm and a barrage of skepticism. The journalist can provide the prose and penmanship that the historian too often lacks. The journalist is oftentimes eye-witness to historical episodes and is thus in a position to pass along a unique perspective that can provide a rich historical understanding. However, the journalist is not trained in the historical methodologies and is thus prone to fatuous errors and crude generalisations that will likely frustrate the historian. Such is this case with the present work. Poor methodology in the form of metaphorical mysticism deals it a critical blow.

A Bright Shining Lie is a memoir, a biography and a political statement entwined into a single work. It follows the life of John Paul Vann, a soldier during the Vietnam War and an old friend of the author. Sheehan paints Vann as an archetypical American soldier, jingoistic and unwilling to admit defeat. Vann's faith in the ability of the United States as a global parent, disciplining and caring for foreign nations as a mother or father shelters and provides for their child, is a testament to his belief in America's ability to police the world. `He saw the United States as a stern yet benevolent authority that enforced peace and brought prosperity to the peoples of the non-Communist nations, sharing the bounty of its enterprise and technology with those who had been denied a fruitful life by poverty and social injustice and bad government.' To Vann, it was only natural that other nations grovel at the wonder-working power of the United States of America. To Sheehan, this faith in this vision of the United States had `come to personify the American endeavor in Vietnam.' This analogy is the salient center of A Bright Shining Lie but also its most obtrusive historical shortcoming. Sheehan places far too much weight on the character flaws of Vann when condemning the Vietnam War and appears to believe that every err in Vann's life must coincide with some flaw in the war or in the American foreign policy apparatus at large. The most glaring misstep occurs during the narrative of Vann's funeral, when Sheehan writes, `They wondered if they were also burying with him this vision and this faith in an ever-innocent America.' Sheehan has on a number of occasions repeated this sentiment that the death of John Paul Vann was, in some mystical way, analogous to the burial of an imperialistic U.S. foreign policy. The historical investigation from which this idea arose is unclear. But clear as crystal is the plain fact that the American empire was not buried with the passing of a pawn in the game. It was rampant in the form of military interventions in the immediate years prior to the publication of A Bright Shining Lie. Sheehan is not blind to the history of American imperial policy. He likely became absorbed by his undertaking and failed to properly analyse the limits of his method.

Sheehan makes known a number of the United States' logistic, strategic and military blunders in Vietnam. In this effort he is decent. However, he once again commits a methodological gaffe. He chronicles in detail the delusions of Vann's superior officers and argues that such delusion occurred at all levels of command, including the Presidency, but does not actually offer any evidence as to how such high level delusion occurred. He simply asks the reader to accept his analogy and be on his way, which brings the reader back to square one and the problems that abound in Sheehan's method.

The analogy is an explanatory device. Its purpose is to further the understanding of an audience. The analogy does not in and of itself prove anything at all. It is a supplement to proof, not a replacement. Had Sheehan used his analogy appropriately and included evidence where fitting he could have avoided his methodological problems.

A Bright Shining Lie is a respectable endeavor when seen for what it literally is, a biography of John Paul Vann. If read as such, its thoroughness, its depth and its personal touch shine through the pages. However, if it is read as a political manifesto it becomes a dense swamp of details with little analysis and conclusions hidden within a tricky metaphorical vista. If it is viewed as a history the majority of it may simply be tossed onto a pile of gasoline and matches.

Brandon Harnish
April 1, 2008

After reading this book I had a much better understanding of a very confusing war. The best written book I have ever read, the author truly has a gift for combining history with the story of a man's tragic life.

The author does a wonderful job researching and analyzing the subject matter of this book. However, the organization and the writing quality could use more work. I found myself often re-reading large sections to understand fully the author's point. When I did, I realized the author had much to say. This was disappointing because the subject matter is very important. I expected more from a journalist.

If you have to dig through a 100 pages to get anything real, it is a horrible book, IMHO. I had high hopes for this book, to tell real history, but it's not here. At least, not clearly here.

Real history is this -- who killed who, and why. All else is commentary, and 95% of this book is commentary, mostly needless commentary.

Yes, this book does "touch" most of the bases, eventually. Eventually they get around to telling you how the US sold out Vietnam, Sheehan just accepts, rather idiotically IMHO, that Ho Chi Minn was a communist -- but even if he was, so what? Ho was actually quite impressed with the US Declaration of Independence, as the parades of 1945, and the Vietnam proclamations, much like our own Declaration of INdepence, proved.

Sheehan, in almost every sentence, tries so hard for style, and opens the book within a narrative of a funeral, who came, where they sat, who came later. That may have pleased him to no end to write -- he gets to sounds smart, who came late? Wow, such great information!

But who came later, who sat behind who, does not matter. It could not matter less, but he puts that up front. This is typical of writers who want to sound smart, that's their first priority., The danger here is, they don't know or care that much, for what actually happened. It is self absorbed and deceptive prose, more to flatter the author about his wisdom, than to tell what the hell happened. Sadly, for some reason, this tripe is accepted in academic circles, particularly in history.

Shame on the lot of them. Tell what happened -- get that first. Get it right, get it clear. Sheehan spent more time and words on this goofy funeral he opened the book with, than on how the US betrayed Vietnam. He was more specific about the funeral, more clear, and probably more correct, about the funeral -- a styalized convience for his opening -- than what really happened. Our betrayal of Vietnam was the bright shinning truth, and that should have been his focus, if he were going to reveal what really mattered.

I would venture not one person in 100 reads this book all the way through, such tedious reading. Sheehan leaves out, inexplicably, Archimedes Patti, Why? Why leave him out? I supposed he is in there somewhere, but not in the index, and Im not going to read every word of these nearly 800 pages to find the mention of him, that some index assistance editor missed, because she had to get to her real job, as baby sitter for the editors kids. If you leave out Patti, and what he knew, and what he said, and why, you don't really have a book about Vietnam and the bright shinning lie.

This book seemed to promise a clear revelation of what happened. While most of what happened is in there somewhere, it's not a clear revelation. Why make people dig through hundreds of pages of puffery and needless details -- like the B20 whatever that brought Averell Harriman back from Moscow? Baffling. Well, not baffling at all -- it made the author sound smart, at least he though so, I supposed.

Sheehan must have looked up information about that flight -- and wow, he was not going to leave that out. The details of that flight are about as important for us to understand the US role in Vietnam betrayal, as what Sheehan ate on his 15th birthday.

I understand you can't be factual and on target sentence after sentence -- that's not the point. The point is, Sheehan not getting to the point and not explaining it, in an honest candid clear way. You can explain things in a clear way -- in fact, if you are writing history, you should.

If tedious was the only sin in this book, that would be fine. But clouding the issue, not making it clear that the US gave Vietnam to France, as much as a farmer gives a bucket of s*** to his neighbor, is to obfuscate. Get it right. US gave Vietnam to France, who wanted it because De Gaulle was an egomaniac who had been a coward in WW1, and was obsessed with his, and France's, status in post war world,.

That's another problem with history, if you wrote it candidly, you can't do 800 pages. You could do 120 maybe. And should do it in 80, But the public might not buy it, history teachers would not put it on their shelves, unread, to impress freshman who came by to discuss being a history major.

Still, if you want to know more details than you need, and don't mind missing clarity, this is a VERY good book, if you have time to plow through it.

Normally I give rabidly anti-Vietnam War books like this one star. In Mr. Sheehan's case, Ive ramped him up for two reasons. First, unlike most of his kind, he uses South Vietnamese sources and shows many of them at least a modicum of respect and sympathy. Also, he does an excellent job of critiquing the American War effort during the Westmoreland years.

In this novel, the author tries tell us of the folly of the American war effort in Vietnam by looking at it through the life of John Vann. Lieutenant Colonel Vann blew the whistle on the poorly thought out American war effort when he served as a military advisor in the early 60s. He advocated focusing on improving the lot of the average South Vietnamese over fighting Communists. He essentially believed that if rank and file Viets were happy with their lot in life, they would not help the Communist effort to take over the Republic of Vietnam. Sadly, the military bureaucracy ignored him. Vann retired from the military but returned to the war as a civilian advisor. He participated in the war from the mid 1960s until his death in 1972.

The best part of this book is the part that deals with Westmoreland and his predecesors' poorly thought out strategy. They thought that all they had to do was bring in a large American field army and kill Communists. As we all know, the plan was a disaster. Sure, they killed lots of Communists. But there was always more flowing down the Ho Chi Minh trail. Add to that, Westmoreland and company were sigularly uninterested in civil affairs. So besides not killing enough Communists, there were always sufficient recruits in the South who were disgruntled with things as they were. All an all a well crafted analysis.

Sadly, the rest of the book is worthless. Sheehan begins with the assumption that Ho and his murderers were the only legitmate leaders for Vietnam. Anything opposing them was futile (if not downright evil). If the subject matter didnt involve the deaths and enslavement of millions, Sheehan's inconsistancies would be hilarious. At one point he states the South Vietnamese Diem government was illegitimate because it took on the trappings of the old style Viet dynasties. Yet within a few pages of this conclusion, he states the Communists were the right people to lead Vietnam because they were descendants of and acted like the old style Mandarin leaders! Huh?!!?? Heres another one. Sheehan is harshly critical of the Republic of Vietnam Land Reform policies. Fair enough. There were problems. But he curiosly wraps up Ho's land reform program that led to the murder of thousands by claiming it was a mistake by Ho's underlings! Say what?? Mr. Sheehan, I hope youre reading this because I would like to educate you on something. North Vietnam was a police state. People didnt sneeze (let alone execute thousands) without permission from the leadership. Not only that, land reform based murders were commonplace in Communist revolutions.

Which brings us to another problem. Sheehan bends over backward to excuse Communist thuggery but cuts absolutely no slack for the South Vietnamese and their allies. A previous post notes Sheehan obsesses over My Lai but gives little analysis to the NVA atrocities in Hue. The systematic murder of thousands is described as a "stupid mistake" while the criminal actions of one American lieutenant violating numerous orders is characterized as shorthand for why the US war effort was illegitimate. Add to that, Sheehan tries to minimize the Hue murders as the actions of hot headed renegade Viet Cong. This is not true. The Hue massacre was done by North Vietnamese soldiers carrying lists of tagets likely drawn up in Hanoi. Heres another gem. Sheehan brushes off the Communist penchant for killing droves of innocent bystanders in shellings and terrorist bombings by noting they sent out warning messages. This in contrast to his harsh condemnation of US killing of civilians in Free Fire Zones (Gee Neil, the US gave warnings too you know). Oh and one more. Sheehan notes Ho and the Communists came into prominence after WW2 by murdering off all the non-Communist nationalists. He says this is okay because the non-Communists were trying to kill the Communists. Besides that, the non-Communists just werent patriotic enough. Isnt that special!

The book is also fatally flawed by its premise. Basically, it shows Vann to be a sell out. Sheehan does this by showing how Vann changed from his civil affairs focus in the early 60s to a "bomb them into the stone age" mindset by the late 60s and early 70s. Sheehan actually puts lots of evidence in the book showing this was a legitmate change but just cant seem to put two and two together. The fact is, by the end of the 60s the battle had switched from an insurgency battle to a traditional war against an invading army. Distributing high quality rice seed and giving land to peasants just doesnt stop North Vietnamese Army juggernauts very well.

Another problem is its behind the times. In particular it paints the North Vietnamese as free willed patriots and the South Vietnamese as illegitimate puppets unable to survive without the aid of foreigners. Its fairly common knowledge today that the Chinese had almost the same number of troopers in North Vietnam (conducting security and engineering work to free up NVA units for combat) as the US did in South Vietnam. Still, one would wonder if good old Neil ever wondered why all the equipment captured from the VC and NVA was stamped "Made in China" or "Made in the USSR".

A major disappointment. But then again what did you expect from a known pro-Hanoi reporter!

I give this book one star for two reasons, first it is WAY overly wordy. It took the guy, like, what, 16 years to write it, and, guess what, no writers' block in that whole time.

More importantly, is the fact that Neil Sheehan was under the sway of the Communist spy Pham Xuan. If what was probably the greatest intelligence coupe in history, Pham Xuan guided Sheehan and Haberstam and other journalists, was given access to the ARVN headquarters, and generally give left to guard the hen house. The thing is Sheehan probably knew Xuan was a spy, if he didn't know he was willfully unaware.

It was said of Sheehan by one of his fellow journalists, that he wanted the US to lose, just to prove himself right.

In the early 1960s Sheehan was a vain young man who had all the answers. Pham Xuan played on his vanity and used him to his own ends. Sheehan did a lot of damage to our country, and to the country of South Vietnam.

Neil Sheehan, was a writer for UPI,and then The New York Times, he was also a self described friend of John Paul Vann. He is of course as fair and unbiased in his treatment of Vann, and the war as all the other reporters. Sheehan did an impressive job with research and facts, especially in screening facts, drawing wrong conclusions, and spinning what was happening. Sheehan was caught-up in conventional wisdom of the war. He also delights in exploring Vann's shortcomings, something everyones friends loves to do. I meet and talked to John Paul Vann in 1969 and 1970, and I doubt that Sheehan spent much time discussing his shortcomings and delusions with him. I also doubt this book would have been published if Vann had not been Killed, and unable to state his opinions. Instead his friend shows how deluded warped and wrong Vann really was, I am not sure he would agree with Sheehan's opinions.

You could stack the literature generated by the French and US Vietnam wars - mostly good, often excellent - high and wide on a very large table, the four legs of which would, in my opinion, consist of Hell In A Very Small Place (Bernard Fall), Vietnam (Stanley Karnow), Death In The Ricefields (Pierre Scholl-Latour), and Bright Shining Lie. Apologies to Bao Ninh, whose brilliant "Sorrow Of War" merits equal billing, but its modest size would cause structural malfunction if it were to replace one of the four monsters. "Bright Shining Lie" is the longest of the lot, and its 800 pages are not for the faint-hearted, though neither were the deeds and words of the mercurial, brilliant, brave, reckless, flawed John Paul Vann, both of which Neil Sheehan covers and contextualises so brilliantly. In our instagram age in which men and women of power have their private lives dragged onto the global stage with theatre liights ablaze, Vann's poor treatment of his first wife and family, and of his subsequent Vietnamese and other paramours, would have done for him well before he co-authored (with Fred Weyand) the military defeat of the Viet Cong in the Tet Offensive of 1968, and the defeat of the North's regular army at Kontum in May 1972. It is a credit to Sheehan that his gripping narrative causes the reader to will Vann to succeed knowing full well that those successes served merely to delay the inevitable and prolong the agony. However it is the history of the early years of the US' ill-starred intervention, during Kennedy's "advisory" period and well before the general slaughter of the Johnson and Nixon eras, that the insitutional arrogance, inflexibility and dishonesty of the US military establishment of the time, and the monstrous corruption of its Saigon clients, is mercilessly exposed by Vann's incisive, courageous and hands-on approach to a cause in which he never ceased to believe. The chapter devoted to the January 1963 battle of Ap Bac and its momentous consequences serves both as warning to, and ultimately parable for, the US's entire tragic fourteen year experience. With the benefit of hindsight it would be easy to criticise Vann for not advocating total withdrawal after Ap Bac, however to do so would be to under-estimate just how his generation of bright, patriotic, optimistic American junior and middle-ranking serviceman and journalists covering the war believed in all sincerity that their cause was both just and worth persevering with. After Tet the reader is entitled to be more judgmental. Vann evidently came to terms with the Saigon establishment's venality, and the conclusion we are invited to draw is that because he had so much invested in the war, professionally and personally, his moral compass drifted as his sole aim became its continuation, with himself as one its shining stars, which in military terms he certainly was. His apparent betrayal of his friend and confidant Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) does not make pretty reading. That his unexpected and seemingly karmic death (a narrative highlight) was welcomed by Hanoi with an outpouring of vitriol and barely concealed relief, is testament to the unlikely story of how the illegitimate child of a prostiture from a poor southern family rose to become one of the finest military leaders of the late 20th century. Graham Greene wrote of Vietnam in The Quiet American, "whatever you are looking for, you will find here". John Vann surely found what he was looking for.

Seventeen years after publication, Sheehan's book, IMHO, remains the best single volume about the war. I won't heap even more praise upon it in light of what many others have already written, but I plead with the publisher to bring out an abridged volume. I'd assign it to my college classes if it were half the length of its nearly 800 pages.

Gary Ostrower