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A review by toggle_fow
Lessons In Disaster: McGeorge Bundy And The Path To War In Vietnam by Gordon M. Goldstein
3.0
This book isn't amazing.
It attempts to be a postmortem of the decision-making of the Vietnam War. It succeeds at being a sort of general portrait of three men circling the edges of the war. Despite the title, it spends just as much time on Johnson and Kennedy as it does on Bundy himself.
This book ostensibly distills its thesis into "lessons" learned from Bundy's experience, but the lessons range from painfully obvious to so abstract and general that they're practically useless. They mostly get lost in the meat of the chapter, just parroted once at the beginning and once at the end to give the illusion of structure. Overall, it works as a rough sketch of the dynamics contributing to the war, and an introduction to the major players and events.
McGeorge Bundy, a genius: Look, losing the war is fine, as long as we sacrifice 100,00 lives first.
It attempts to be a postmortem of the decision-making of the Vietnam War. It succeeds at being a sort of general portrait of three men circling the edges of the war. Despite the title, it spends just as much time on Johnson and Kennedy as it does on Bundy himself.
This book ostensibly distills its thesis into "lessons" learned from Bundy's experience, but the lessons range from painfully obvious to so abstract and general that they're practically useless. They mostly get lost in the meat of the chapter, just parroted once at the beginning and once at the end to give the illusion of structure. Overall, it works as a rough sketch of the dynamics contributing to the war, and an introduction to the major players and events.
McGeorge Bundy, a genius: Look, losing the war is fine, as long as we sacrifice 100,00 lives first.