Using portraits of America's flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country's recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.

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

"Seductively readable.... [I]t is a staggeringly ambitious undertaking that is fully matched by Halberstam's performance."
   NEWSWEEK

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience."
   THE NEW YORK TIMES