Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Best and the Brightest

By: David Halberstam
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a foreword by Senator John McCain.

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.” (The New York Times)

Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country’s recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.

“The most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam.... It is also the Iliad of the American empire and the Odyssey of this nation’s search for its idealistic soul. The Best and the Brightest is almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.” (The Boston Globe)

“Deeply moving... We cannot help but feel the compelling power of this narrative.... Dramatic and tragic, a chain of events overwhelming in their force, a distant war embodying illusions and myths, terror and violence, confusions and courage, blindness, pride, and arrogance.” (Los Angeles Times)

“A fascinating tale of folly and self-deception... [An] absorbing, detailed, and devastatingly caustic tale of Washington in the days of the Caesars.” (The Washington Post Book World)

“Seductively readable... It is a staggeringly ambitious undertaking that is fully matched by Halberstam’s performance.... This is in all ways an admirable and necessary book.” (Newsweek)

“A story every American should read.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

©2002 David Halberstam (P)2017 Random House Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

A Bright Shining Lie cover art
A Certain Idea of France cover art
The Fifties cover art
The Path to Power cover art
Richard Nixon cover art
The Pentagon Papers cover art
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich cover art
American Prometheus cover art
Truman cover art
The Invisible Bridge cover art
Embers of War cover art
Drift cover art
The Gold cover art
Known and Unknown cover art
A Better War cover art
America's Secret War cover art

What listeners say about The Best and the Brightest

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    70
  • 4 Stars
    14
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    62
  • 4 Stars
    11
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    63
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful read

Incredibly in depth review of US involvement in Vietnam which was always fascinating and never boring.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

The research

Meticulous and painstakingly researched. However, the lengthy profiles of the participants - some minor players - parodied the war itself. Long passages of tedious boredom, punctuated with the odd snip of interest.

The book only came alive for me at the Gulf of Tonkin incident which is some 28 hours in.

Researched and written in the late sixties and early seventies when the war was at its height the narrative about the war stumbled at around 65 - 66.

I think the author achieved what he set out to - and full marks to him - but on the whole it’s not easy listening.

4 stars

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Thorough exposition

Details and all the key players. Maybe it was possible to carry out the thesis of where things went wrong (intellectual hubris) in a bit of a shortened road, but the level of detail and amount of sources lends a lot of credibility to the project.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Do what is right … not easy ….

This book is a brilliant presentation of the dangers of the rigorous reliance hubris vs the rigorous adherence to balanced analysis. This work is a must read for all those in a position to make critical decisions that effect lives … in all of its forms.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The sadness, lies, delusion and hubris.

Required reading for anyone capable of thinking for themselves. Tragic and absolutely riveting.
Supreme Halberstam.


Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

fascinating

It's hard to believe that America did the exact same again in regards to Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction. only this time they sucked the British with them . It seems history does repeat itself.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Utterly brilliant book

This book is sensationally good. One of the best uses of 34 odd hours of my life. Rich narrative, profoundly convincing, deeply sad. Definitive book on the Vietnam War and how the US got bogged down in it and the failings that led to that.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A classic which lives up to its reputation

The title has entered the popular culture and while often used in the wrong context, the reason it has is this book. Often the word classic is used to casually to describe a book/audiobook but not in this instance. It provides a close examination of the men,and they were all men,who as members of first the Kennedy and then Johnson administrations made the decisions which led to the United States becoming quagmired in the Vietnam War.

While more documents have been released and new perspectives have been explored since this book was first released the basic argument it presents and the descriptions of the characters of the various decision makers remain, I feel, reasonably accurate. A well rounded audiobook which does not jump straight into the issue of Vietnam without giving background on how the U.S came to be where it was in 1961 when JFK took office is very informative.

While subsequent information makes one or two descriptions of certain persons seem overly kind, primarily John F. Kennedy whose actual decisions and public statements left his successor with very few options. instead too much space is given to JFK and his private doubts. But this is a minor criticisim of what I found to be a well narrated and fascinating audiobook about the hubris of the powerful.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!