Volume 19, Number 11 & 12 · January 25, 1973
Sons of the Morning
By Mary McCarthy
The Best and the Brightest
by David Halberstam
Random House, 688 pp., $10.00
What is the purpose of this book? Six hundred and eighty-eight pages of 'colorful' narrative that seem to have been breathlessly dictated to a recording device and, except for the portions that appeared in magazines, never to have been touched by an editorial pencil wielded by the author or anybody else. One keeps asking oneself to what end all these excited words were assembled, what they add to the already replete literature on the US and Vietnam. The book is now a fantastic best seller, yet the author cannot have aimed simply at the market. He is too sincere, too 'concerned,' and who could have foreseen that the time was right for a huge 'backgrounder' on our Vietnam involvement, studded, like a ham, with anecdotes and gossip about historic decisions and high-status personalities, syrupy with compassionate insights into the gamesmanship of power?
Review, 7581 words
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