The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam

  White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1964. New York, Atheneum, 1965.

  White, William S., The Professional: Lyndon B. Johnson. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1964.

  Wicker, Tom, JFK and LBJ: The Influence of Personality upon Politics. Baltimore, Penguin, 1968.

  THE DECISION MAKING ON VIETNAM:

  Austin, Anthony, The President’s War. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1971.

  Brandon, Henry, Anatomy of Error. Boston, Gambit, 1969.

  Ellsberg, Daniel, Papers on the War. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1972.

  Geyelin, Philip, Lyndon Johnson and the World. New York, Praeger, 1966.

  Goulden, Joseph C., Truth Is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin Affair—Illusion and Reality. Chicago, Rand, 1969.

  Goulding, Phil G., Confirm or Deny: Informing the People on National Security. New York, Harper, 1970.

  Graff, H., The Tuesday Cabinet. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1970.

  Heren, Louis, No Hail, No Farewell. New York, Harper, 1970.

  Hoopes, Townsend, The Limits of Intervention. New York, McKay, 1970.

  Janeway, Eliot, The Economics of Crisis: War, Politics and the Dollar. New York, Weybright, 1971.

  Leacocos, John, Fire in the Outbasket. New York, World, 1968.

  Loory, Stuart H., and Kraslow, David, The Secret Search for Peace in Vietnam. New York, Random House, 1968.

  Manning, Robert, and Janeway, Michael, Who We Are: An Atlantic Chronicle of the United States and Vietnam 1966­1969. Boston, Little, Brown, 1969.

  Oberdorfer, Don, Tet. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1971.

  The Pentagon Papers, as published by the New York Times. Written by Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E. W. Kenworthy and Fox Butterfield. New York, Bantam, 1971.

  The Pentagon Papers, U.S. Department of Defense. The Senator Gravel edition. Boston, Beacon Press, 1971.

  Stavins, Ralph; Barnet, Richard J.; and Raskin, Marcus G., Washington Plans an Aggressive War. New York, Random House, 1971.

  Taylor, Maxwell, Swords and Plowshares. New York, Norton, 1972.

  Weintal, Edward, and Bartlett, Charles, Facing the Brink: An Intimate Study of Crisis Diplomacy. New York, Scribner, 1967.

  THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN INDOCHINA:

  Buttinger, Joseph, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled. 2 vols. New York, Praeger, 1967.

  Cameron, Allan W., ed., Viet-Nam Crisis: A Documentary History, Vol. I, 1940­1956. Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1971.

  De Gaulle, Charles, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1968.

  Devillers, Phillippe, and Lacouture, Jean, End of a War: Indochina Nineteen Fifty-Four. New York, Praeger, 1969.

  Draper, Theodore, The Abuse of Power. New York, Viking, 1967.

  Fall, Bernard B., Hell in a Very Small Place. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1966.

  ———, Street Without Joy. Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole, 1966.

  ———, Two Vietnams: A Political and Military Analysis. 2nd rev. ed. New York, Praeger, 1967.

  Gettleman, Marvin E., Vietnam. New York, New American Library, 1970.

  Greene, Graham, The Quiet American. New York, Viking, 1957.

  Gurtov, Melvin, The First Vietnam Crisis: Chinese Communist Strategy and United States Involvement, 1953­1954. New York, Columbia University Press, 1967.

  Halberstam, David, The Making of a Quagmire. New York, Random House, 1965.

  Hughes, Emmet John, The Ordeal of Power. New York, Atheneum, 1963.

  Kalb, Marvin, and Abel, Elie, The Roots of Involvement: The U.S. in Asia 1784­1971. New York, Norton, 1971.

  Lederer, William, and Burdick, Eugene, The Ugly American. New York, Norton, 1958.

  McAlister, John T., Jr., Viet-Nam: The Origins of Revolution. New York, Knopf, 1969.

  Mecklin, John, Mission in Torment. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1965.

  Pfeffer, Richard M., ed., No More Vietnams: The War and the Future of American Foreign Policy. New York, Harper, 1968.

  Ridgway, Matthew B., The Korean War. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1967.

  ———, Soldier. New York, Harper, 1956.

  Schell, Jonathan, The Village of Ben Suc. New York, Knopf, 1967.

  Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy 1941­1966. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1967.

  Shaplen, Robert, The Lost Revolution: U.S. in Vietnam 1946­1966. New York, Harper, 1965.

  THE CHINA ERA:

  China White Paper: August Nineteen Forty-Nine. United States Department of State. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1971. (Reprint of 1949 ed.)

  Clubb, O. Edmund, Communism in China As Reported from Hankow in 1932. New York, Columbia University Press, 1968.

  Davies, John P., Jr., Foreign and Other Affairs. New York, Norton, 1964.

  Feis, Herbert, The China Tangle. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1953.

  Service, John S., The Amerasia Papers. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971.

  Sevareid, Eric, Not So Wild a Dream. New York, Knopf, 1946.

  Stilwell, Joseph W., The Stilwell Papers, arranged and edited by Theodore H. White. New York, Sloane, 1948.

  Tuchman, Barbara W., Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911­45. New York, Macmillan, 1971.

  Wedemeyer, Albert C., Wedemeyer Reports! New York, Holt, 1958.

  THE MC CARTHY PERIOD:

  Buckley, William F., Jr., and Bozell, L. Brent, McCarthy and His Enemies. New Rochelle, N.Y., Arlington House, 1954.

  Cook, Fred J., The Nightmare Decade. New York, Random House, 1971.

  Harper, Alan D., The Politics of Loyalty. Westport, Conn., Greenwood, 1969.

  THE COLD WAR PERIOD:

  Acheson, Dean, Morning and Noon. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

  ———, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York, Norton, 1969.

  Barnet, Richard J., The Economy of Death. New York, Atheneum, 1969.

  Campbell, John, The Fudge Factory. New York, Basic Books, 1971.

  Forrestal, James, Forrestal Diaries. Walter Millis and E. S. Duffield, eds. New York, Viking, 1966.

  Gardner, Lloyd C., Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy. Chicago, Quadrangle, 1970.

  Halle, Louis Joseph, The Cold War As History. New York, Harper, 1967.

  Kennan, George F., Memoirs, 1925­1950. Boston, Little, Brown, 1967.

  Steel, Ronald, Imperialists and Other Heroes. New York, Random House, 1971.

  Stimson, Henry L., and Bundy, McGeorge, On Active Service in Peace and War. New York, Harper, 1948.

  THE NIXON YEARS:

  Riegle, Don, O Congress. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1972.

  Whalen, Richard, Catch the Falling Flag. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1972.

  MILITARY:

  Janowitz, Morris, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait. Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1960.

  Just, Ward, Military Men. New York, Knopf, 1970.

  Raymond, Jack, Power at the Pentagon. New York, Harper, 1964.

  Rodberg, Leonard S., and Shearer, Derek, eds., The Pentagon Watchers: Students Report on the National Security State. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1971.

  The Modern Library Editorial Board

  Maya Angelou

  •

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  •

  A. S. Byatt

  •

  Caleb Carr

  •

  Christopher Cerf

  •

  Ron Chernow

  •

  Shelby Foote

  •

  Stephen Jay Gould

  •

  Vartan Gregorian

  •

  Richard Howard

  •

  Charles Johnson

  •

  Jon Krakauer

  •

  Edmund Morris

  •

  Joyce Carol Oates

  •


  Elaine Pagels

  •

  John Richardson

  •

  Salman Rushdie

  •

  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

  •

  Carolyn See

  •

  William Styron

  •

  Gore Vidal

  About the Author

  David Halberstam is the author of a number of bestselling books, including The Fifties, Playing for Keeps, The Powers That Be and The Children.

  ALSO BY DAVID HALBERSTAM

  The Noblest Roman

  Making of a Quagmire

  One Very Hot Day

  The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy

  Ho

  The Powers That Be

  The Reckoning

  The Breaks of the Game

  The Amateurs

  Summer of ’49

  The Next Century

  The Fifties

  October 1964

  The Children

  Playing for Keeps

  2001 Modern Library Edition

  Copyright © 1969, 1971, 1972, 1992, 2000, 2001 by David Halberstam

  Introduction copyright © 2001 by John McCain

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Modern Library and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This work was published in different form in 1972 and 1992 by Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Atlanta Magazine: Excerpts from “Notes on a Native Son” by Ray Moore (interview with Dean Rusk originally for WSB-TV) from the October 1965 issue of Atlanta Magazine. Copyright © 1965 by Atlanta Magazine. Reprinted by permission of Atlanta Magazine, Ray Moore, and WSB-TV.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Halberstam, David.

  The best and the brightest / David Halberstam ; foreword by John McCain.—Modern Library ed.

  p. cm.

  1. United States—Politics and government—1961­1963. 2. United States—Politics and government—1963­1969. 3. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961­1975—United States. I. Title.

  E841 .H25 2001

  973.92—dc212001031261

  Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-098-4

  v3.0