McNAMARA AT WAR: A NEW HISTORY

30K First Print - The fullest biography of Robert McNamara, a formidable but deeply flawed man at the center of the Vietnam War. he was the architect of the Vietnam War and as such was deeply flawed -- as early as 1965 he privately acknowledged that the Vietnam War was unwinnable the authors had great access to his widow and children, a new diary from one of his aides, and a cache of correspondence between him and Jackie Kennedy there are lots of lessons from McNamara's mistakes that can apply to today's foreign policy Taubman is a Pulitzer Prize winner and is here working with his brother, a journalist and historian, to give this protrait PUBLICITY: major reviews and interviews; some events on the east coast; I'm completely drawn into this magisterial psychological portrait of McNamara. I think the timing is right: this far out from the Vietnam War, there's a readership ready for a more dispassionate study of him (when his memoir came out in the 90s, anyone older than me just wanted to burn it). This really is a fascinating and tragic portrait of how the psychological foibles and blind spots of an otherwise brilliant man led to an unthinkably enormous tragedy. I found the look at his relationship with the Kennedys (including Jackie) and LBJ, and how they (additionally) compromised his judgement, particularly revelatory. - Joe Murphy