Dereliction of Duty : Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

For years the popular myth surrounding the Vietnam War was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew what it would take to win but were consistently thwarted or ignored by the politicians in power. Now H. R. McMaster shatters this and other misconceptions about the military and Vietnam in Dereliction of Duty. Himself a West Point graduate, McMaster painstakingly waded through every memo and report concerning Vietnam from every meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to build a comprehensive picture of a house divided against itself: a president and his coterie of advisors obsessed with keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue versus the Joint Chiefs themselves, mired in interservice rivalries and unable to reach any unified goals or conclusions about the country's conduct in the war.

McMaster stresses two elements in his discussion of America's failure in Vietnam: the hubris of Johnson and his advisors and the weakness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dereliction of Duty provides both a thorough exploration of the military's role in determining Vietnam policy and a telling portrait of the men most responsible.

• The Best and the Brightest
• In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
• The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
• Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975
• Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
• Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam
• We Were Soldiers Once...And Young: Ia Drang The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam
• The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
• The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War
• Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War