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Title: A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan ISBN: 0-679-72414-1 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 19 September, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (58 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: a must read for all
Comment: Being in my early thirties, as with most of my peers, I did not learn much about Viet Nam in school. This book sheds "a bright shining" light on the (mis)information and (un)intelligence that involved the United States in a "war" we had no business being a part of. This book provides a great deal of history about Viet Nam's struggles against "occupiers" from ancient China onward and a first-hand view of what was going on in there during the turmoil. There is a LOT of information in this over-700 page book, but it's worth the read and the attention one must pay to all the details.
It's also a good example of how out nation's leaders and military officials blindly engaged in war based on ego. It makes one hyper-aware to what's going on in the world now and how history could very well be repeating itself.
Om shanti.

Rating: 5
Summary: Where Have All the Young Men Gone?
Comment: Neil Sheehan does an amazing job with this book. In my experience (for what that is worth), books by journalists often tend to lack depth--both analytic and empathic. Sheehan does not have this deficiency. This volume certainly deserved the Pulitzer it won. I have no doubt that John Paul Vann is the perfect focal point for the story of America's involvement in Vietnam--he was young, idealistic, committed, unaware of his own shortsightedness, and, both knowingly and not, part of a great big lie.

It is amazing that, after the passage of nearly thirty years, the existence of a myriad of analyses of the quagmire of Vietnam, and the silent witness of a black granite wall in Washington bearing over 58,000 names, we still refuse to learn the lesson that the world is not as simple as we might like it to be, and that it is not so easily remade in our image.

This book is a must-read for anyone starting to engage the subject of the Vietnam War, and, more generally, for those interested in how good intentions can go bad (and bad intentions only get worse). In addition, I would recommend Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly."

On a final note, those with a taste for cinematic adaptations of non-fiction might be interested in the made-for-cable movie from the 1990's of the same title. I thought it left some things to be desired, but it was, all things considered, a fair treatment of the book

Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent view of both sides of this man - Good, Bad & Ugly
Comment: This is without doubt one of my favorite books - particularly the way it shows both sides of the same man. In one half I was highly impressed and somewhat in awe (not something I do easily or often). But in the second half, the author portrays a man who I found I truly disliked. We all have a Good, Bad and an Ugly side to our personalities. In this book we get to see all facets of John Paul Vann, an American hero and villan.

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