Book description
Outspoken, professional and fearless, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann went to
Vietnam in 1962, full of confidence in America's might and right to
prevail. He was soon appalled by the South Vietnamese troops'
unwillingness to fight, by their random slaughter of civilians and by
the arrogance and corruption of the US military. He flouted his
supervisors and leaked his sharply pessimistic - and, as it turned
out, accurate - assessments to the US press corps in Saigon. Among
them was Sheehan, who became fascinated by the angry Vann, befriended
him and followed his tragic and reckless career.
Sixteen years in the making, A Bright Shining Lie is an
eloquent and disturbing portrait of a man who in many ways personified
the US war effort in Vietnam, of a solider cast in the heroic mould,
an American Lawrence of Arabia. Blunt, idealistic, patronising to the
Vietnamese, Vann was haunted by a shameful secret - the fact that he
was the illegitimate son of a 'white trash' prostitute. Gambling away
his career, Vann left the army that he loved and returned to Vietnam
as a civilian in the pacification programme. He rose to become the
first American civilian to wield a general's command in war. When he
was killed in 1972, he was mourned at Arlington cemetery by leading
political figures of the day. Sheehan recounts his astonishing story
in this intimate and intense meditation on a conflict that scarred the
conscience of a nation.
Neil Sheehan was a Vietnam War correspondent for
United Press International
and the
New York Times
and won a number of awards for his reporting. In 1971 he obtained the
Pentagon Papers, which brought the
Times
the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for meritorious public service.
A
Bright Shining Lie
won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.
