A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan

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This passionate, epic account of the Vietnam War centers on Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, whose story illuminates America's failures and disillusionment in Southeast Asia. Vann was a field adviser to the army when American involvement was just beginning. He quickly became appalled at the corruption of the South Vietnamese regime, their incompetence in fighting the Communists, and their brutal alienation of their own people. Finding his superiors too blinded by political lies to understand that the war was being thrown away, he secretly briefed reporters on what was really happening. One of those reporters was Neil Sheehan. This definitive expose on why America lost the war won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1989.

Through the personality of John Paul Vann, a man of great courage and also of great cunning, Neil Sheehan orchestrates a great fugue evoking all the elements of the war: the conflict of wills and the self-deceiving illusions of the American military and civilian bureaucracy, the historical forces that brought the two sides into conflict; the terrible battles in which they sacrificed so many of their best; and the men who gave the struggle its meaning.

Sheehan's tragic biography of John Paul Vann is also a sweeping history of America's seduction, entrapment and disillusionment in Vietnam.
Neil Sheehan's monumental bestselling account of the Vietnam War, winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and the National Book Award. This tragic biography of John Paul Vann is also a sweeping history of America's seduction, entrapment, and disillusionment in Vietnam. 16-page photo insert.

 

 

 

 

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