Lessons in Disaster McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam [Paperback]

A compelling portrait of a man once serenely confident, searching decades later for self-understanding. Richard Holbrooke,The New York Times Book Review

I had a part in a great failure. I made mistakes of perception, recommendation and execution. If I have learned anything I should share it.

These are not words that Americans ever expected to hear from McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. But in the last years of his life, Bundythe only principal architect of Vietnam strategy to have maintained his public silencedecided to revisit the decisions that had led to war and to look anew at the role he played.

In this original and provocative work of presidential history, Gordon M. Goldstein distills the essential lessons of America's involvement in Vietnam, drawing on his prodigious research as well as interviews and analysis he conducted with Bundy before his death in 1996.Lessons in Disasteris a historical tour de force on the uses and misuses of American power, and offers instructive guidance that we must heed if we are not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The must-read book for Obama's war team. . . . Many on the national security team at the White House are now readingLessons in Disasterby Gordon Goldstein. . . . A great, great book. Well worth the read as the Afghanistan debate heats up. George Stephanopoulos, ABCNews.com

Full of fresh information on how the best and the brightest led America into the fiasco. . . . The book's intimate account of White House decision-making is almost literally being replayed in Washington as the new president sets a course for the war in Afghanistan. The time for all Americans to catch up with this extraordinary cautionary tale is now. Frank Rich, The New York Times

A Vietnam book that haunts the U.S. in Afghanistan. Stephen Schlesinger, Huffington Post

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