“In this book, I have sought to blend personal experience, journalism, and scholarship. It is history written by a journalist who was there.”—Peter L. W. Osnos
LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail details how President Lyndon B. Johnson and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, made choices central to U.S. strategy in Vietnam, ending in defeat. The portrait emerges of men who knew that conventional victory was impossible but who could not or would not reverse the policies that they and the military pursued.
In their own words, especially McNamara’s, how and why this happened is a story never before told with such immediacy and insight. The lessons for today’s policymakers are clear—and could have avoided the outcomes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail
"Insightful and informative . . . benefits from Osnos’ unique insights.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Utilizing his unprecedented access to the record, Peter Osnos has excavated the complex relationship between Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert S. McNamara. Osnos expertly pulls back the curtain, revealing the central role that the character and personalities of these two complicated men played in the decision to escalate the war. We learn something new on almost every page.”—Robert K. Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations, Vassar College, and author of Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam
“LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail brings to one of history’s most-well covered topics new insights and a deeper understanding of Johnson and McNamara than we have ever had. . . . The approaching fifty-year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam debacle offers the right moment to learn anew.”—Daniel Weiss, Homewood Professor of the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University; president emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and author of In That Time: Michael O’Donnell and the Tragic Era of Vietnam
“LBJ and McNamara is a perceptive treatment of the complex but crucial relationship at the heart of U.S. decision making on Vietnam. Peter Osnos vividly conveys how tragedy defined not just the Vietnam war in popular memory but the relationship between two historic figures of twentieth-century America.”—Brian VanDeMark, Professor of History, United States Naval Academy, and author of Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam and Kent State: An American Tragedy