A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam Hardcover - 2009

Media reviews

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."
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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."
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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."
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"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?'"
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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