Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara

As advertised and arrived on time.

Of all the things in this book, a few stand out as being unique. While November of 1965 might not be of much importance for most people, it was particularly troubling for the Secretary of Defense. This book puts that time in Chapter 17, called "Two Enormous Miscalculations." The most unexpected event on November 2 was the death of "a thirty-one-year-old Quaker pacifist" named Norman Morrison, who had "drenched himself in kerosene and burned himself to death" in "the parking lot below the window of McNamara's office to send a message to him." (p. 354) The calculations of the chapter were military: setting how many American troops would be sent to Vietnam. I see McNamara using his position to express a deeper concern, in a memo to the president on December 6, 1965, that "the odds are about even that, even with the recommended deployments, we will be faced in early 1967 with a military standoff at a much higher level." (p. 359) This book exists mainly to show the nature of that problem. Those who write about these things as mere political concerns, and call such thinking the Vietnam Syndrome, can see, if they care to look here, that this was the real nature of the Vietnam experience as it was weighed in the scales of up and down, when it was happening. This book also meets McNamara head on at his usual level. For example, in the Epilogue, when the author "suggested quoting some things he had said, he snapped that he would deny having said them." (p. 614) If McNamara could have limited what he said to whatever was in his own best interest, he would never have told you people so much.

This book was a pretty unbiased portrayal of Robert Macnamara. I rarley write reviews but felt this book needed more support. Macnamara is in between the Devils costume his critics put him in and the end of life saintly "Fog of War" he tried to portray.This book does a nice job of telling us who the real Bob Macnamara was. So if you are curious to find that out this is the book for you.

This book caused Bob McNamara to write the book that he said he would not write. Deborah Shapley did an outstanding job. It was well researched covering millions of years that shaped mountains, rivers, races, wars and events that lead to what we called Vietnam. The role of Wilson after WW1 and '...let the peoples decide...' did not include Ho Chi Minh. If Japan and France could not control Vietnam, how could the U.S.A.? VERY Costly error.

Well written book about one of the most influential men of the 20th century.