From Publishers Weekly
Former Secretary of Defense McNamara's controversial indictment of American policy in Vietnam was a PW bestseller for 12 weeks.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967 under both presidents Kennedy and Johnson, has remained silent about U.S. policy toward Vietnam until now. This memoir reveals a decent, loyal, and able man who struggled to remain loyal to the president and yet to get the United States out of Vietnam. When McNamara left office, 15,979 Americans had been killed in Viet Nam; by the time the United States left Vietnam, the number stood at over 58,000. McNamara's recollections are put to rigorous testing by his junior author, VanDeMark, who checked them against the now-declassified written and taped records of the period. Publicly perceived as a "hawk," McNamara documents his attempts from 1966 on to find a way for the United States to exit from the war. The culmination of his effort is a May 19, 1967 memorandum to LBJ, calling for U.S. withdrawal. President Johnson never sent a reply. McNamara reveals that "I do not know to this day, whether I quit or was fired." At any rate, McNamara left the Pentagon to begin a successul ten-year term as president of the World Bank. In looking back, he holds that "we sought to do the right thing...but in my judgment hindsight proved us wrong." McNamara's unpretentious, genuine, and touching memoir should contribute further to healing the wounds of the Vietnam experience; it belongs in all public and academic libraries.?James Rhodes, Luther Coll., Decorah, Ia.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
