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Zusatztext Praise for A Bright Shining Lie WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE PULITZER PRIZE "Dazzling . . . vividly written and deeply felt! with a power that comes from long reflection and strong emotions." – The New York Times Book Review "Masterly . . . a compelling! graphic and deeply sensitive biography [and] one of the few brilliant histories of the American entanglement in Vietnam . . . Sheehan's skillful weaving of anecdote and history! of personal memoir and psychological profile! [gives] the book the sense of having been written by a novelist! journalist and scholar all rolled into one." – The New York Times "If there is one book that captures the Vietnam war in the sheer Homeric scale of its passion and folly! this book is it. Neil Sheehan orchestrates a great fugue evoking all the elements of the war." – The New York Times Book Review "A brilliant work of enormous substance and ambition. In telling one man's story [ A Bright Shining Lie ] sets out to define the fatal contradictions that lost America the war in Vietnam. It belongs to the same order of merit as Dispatches ! The Best and the Brightest and Fire in the Lake ." – "The Washington Post Book World[ A Bright Shining Lie ] is more than a biography. It is also a compelling and clear history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Mr. Sheehan's book . . . is the best answer to any American who asks: 'How could this have happened?'" – The Wall Street Journal "Enormous power . . . full of great accomplishments . . . Sheehan has written . . . the best book ever about Vietnam." – Newsweek "One of the milestones in the literature about the war." –The Christian Science Monitor Informationen zum Autor Neil Sheehan is the author of A Fiery Peace in a Cold War . He spent three years in Vietnam as a war correspondent for United Press International and The New York Times and won numerous awards for his reporting. In 1971 he obtained the Pentagon Papers! which brought the Times the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for meritorious public service. Sheehan lives in Washington! D.C. He is married to the writer Susan Sheehan. Klappentext In his Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning monument of history and biography! Sheehan tells the story of John Paul Vann--the one irreplaceable American in Vietnam--and the tragedy that destroyed a country and squandered so much of America's young manhood and resources. from "The Funeral" It was a funeral to which they all came. They gathered in the red brick chapel beside the cemetery gate. Six gray horses were hitched to a caisson that would carry the coffin to the grave. A marching band was ready. An honor guard from the Army's oldest regiment, the regiment whose rolls reached back to the Revolution, was also formed in ranks before the white Georgian portico of the chapel. The soldiers were in full dress, dark blue trimmed with gold, the colors of the Union Army, which had safeguarded the integrity of the nation. The uniform was unsuited to the warmth and humidity of this Friday morning in the early summer of Washington, but this state funeral was worthy of the discomfort. John Paul Vann, the soldier of the war in Vietnam, was being buried at Arlington on June 16, 1972. The war had already lasted longer than any other in the nation's history and had divided America more than any conflict since the Civil War. In this war without heroes, this man had been the one compelling figure. The intensity and distinctiveness of his character and the courage and drama of his life had seemed to sum up so many of the qualities Americans admired in themselves as a people. By an obsession, by an unyielding dedication to the war, he ...
