This book was first published in 1972 and has held up quite well over time. It is an examination of the men who were brought into government by President Kennedy and who stayed in government to work with Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately, these "best and brightest" also worked together to form the policies that gradually drew the United States into the war in Vietnam. A must read for anyone who is involved in developing public policy.

Outstanding book, as is anything that I have read by Halberstam. He was such a gifted reporter and writer, able to flesh out the often conflicting motives in people and describe how their personalities significantly impacted policy decisions. Halberstam does focus on personalities as far as history goes - believing that peoples' beliefs, concerns, fears, flaws, and strengths had much more impact on events than the reverse. I recently read "War in a Time of Peace" which definitely seemed like it was patterned off of this book. Both books are remarkably similar although they deal with different time periods and people. This book concerns the massive bungling, ineptitude, hubris, and poor policy planning during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations that led to the U.S. getting irrevocably entangled in Vietnam. Halberstam gives a mini-biography of all of the major players, and does a good job of adding background to the story by showing how the conflict started, what the U.S. did/did not do back in the 1940s and 1950s when France was still trying to retain colonial control. He also talks about the Eisenhower/John Foster Dulles foreign policy of the 1950s, and how some aspects of that were a reaction to the Truman Administration's supposed "loss" of China. It is somewhat disturbing to read how doves were treated then, how they were ostracized, reassigned, shoved aside, or thrown out of government for voicing dissent or - in some cases - not even dissent but rather an alternative viewpoint that did not mesh with the propaganda that some people in the military and the administrations were trying to sell. There were so many culprits who had their hands all over the escalation policy and the lies that were sold to the American people and the Congress: McNamara, Rusk, Johnson, Nolting, Taylor, Rostow, Bundy, Westmoreland. It is amazing how all of these people kept deluding themselves into thinking that the U.S. could just overpower the Vietcong and be seen as heroes throughout most of the world, all the while never taking seriously exactly who the enemy was and what it was capable of doing. They did not seem capable of viewing things from anything other than a United States-is-superior manner. It is so unfortunate that thousands of American servicemen died due to this overconfidence and arrogance. It seems eerily similar to what occurred in Iraq over the past decade.

The torch was indeed passed-passed from one generation of the wealthy elite to the next. The book is infinitely enjoyable to a political history junkie like myself. It's impressive in it's coverage of a lot of the most interesting political moments of that time. Sadly, it also helped to drive home a cynical reality I've been avoiding for over twenty years and, for that, I am not grateful. While reading this book current political events compelled me to finally give in to the reality of politics in America which is that, unless you're one of the people from a background similar to the "best and the brightest" reported on in this book, your impact on politics is minimal if indeed you make any impact at all. What I took away from the book was a feeling of cynical remorse for what might have been, for how our political mistakes as a people seem to have taken such a dramatic turn during and after this time period but, also, a feeling that the American public bought into a myth, an idea that seems to have never really existed. The best and the brightest who manned our halls of government were from the same moneyed, upper class, aristocratic families of those who man our halls of government today. The myth, however, was that these then were somehow truly different, that they, as the best and the brightest, heeded what the American public wanted. All we had to do was stay involved. Write our congressmen, our presidents, and keep working. The best and the brightest would act in our best interest and, we assumed, in the world's. We had faith in our government and trusted it. This myth still pervades the politically engaged today. With the internet's vast resources, we get constant information on what our government seems to be doing. We think we are in the halls ourselves. We feel like our leaders are listening to us, that they're reading our comments, our blogs, our status updates and our tweets. They are not. They represent those who helped hoist them into their positions for us to consider them among the best and the brightest.