Crying, Halberstam

[Craig Bleakley]

Why should someone read GR or M&D?  Well, for reasons of their own.  That
is, for reasons that develop out of one's own interests and concerns, and
not because a lot of folks with un-vested intellectual interests can explain
their reasons for having read these books.

I just (re-)read a book that further supports some folks' contention that GR
is primarily a book about the sixties: to wit, "The Best and the Brightest,"
by David Halberstam.  My goodness, what a book!  Perhaps the most amazing
thing about it is how clear-eyed Halberstam is about American involvement in
Vietnam at such an early date (1973?).  Or the zillion illuminating
ancedotes he knows about the key players.  I plowed through it in a week,
having begun, symbolically enough, on Memorial Day, after watching PBS
re-run the old "Vietnam" series.  B&B is undoubtedly one of the two or three
essential works on America in the sixties (along with, say, Sale's "SDS"),
or in Vietnam (along with, say, Herr's "Dispatches" and Karnow's "Vietnam: A
History").

If They can get you asking the wrong questions, They don't need to worry
about the answers indeed.  Halberstam was one of the few to ask the right
questions and to expose the answers for the lies they were.  I can't
over-reccomend it.  In fact, I think I'll go over to Amazon and write up a
glowing reader's review.

Craig Bleakley