Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam

This book could have been highly enlightening and entertaining at the same time, despite its length. Instead, it kind of falls flat on arrival and struggles to really maintain momentum each time it is stopped in its tracks. The story of the Vietnam War is one that is well known and has been widely written about. Brian VanDeMark gives us a picture from inside the various administrations–Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon–that confronted the growing quagmire in Vietnam and their inability to come to terms with the fact that Vietnam was not a domino and that they made a mistake. Sadly, this is not the book to tell that story.

The first 100 or so pages are really just an introduction, and you do not know that it is an introduction until you are through it. There is no need for such a thorough introduction; honestly, it could have been a lot shorter and still gotten its point across. Also you get introduced to portions of the book where it completely stops, and these are digressions into psychology and philosophical thinking, such as confirmation bias and not being able to see from other people’s point of view, etc. They range in length from a paragraph to a couple of pages, but each time they stop the narrative cold.