The Color of Truth
McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms
1st Edition
Published on 10. January 2017
496 pages
978-1-5011-6916-8 (ISBN)
Description
From the Pulitzer Prize?winning coauthor of American Prometheus?this biography of the Bundy Brothers inspired the Academy Award?winning film Oppenheimer.
In this definitive biography of McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, two of "the best and the brightest" who advised presidents about peace and war during the most dangerous years of the Cold War, Kai Bird pens a portrait of the fiercely patriotic, brilliant, and brazenly self-confident men who directed a steady escalation of a war they did not believe could be won.
Drawing on seven years of research, nearly one hundred interviews, and scores of still-classified top secret documents in a masterful reevaluation of America's actions throughout the Cold War and Vietnam, The Color of Truth tells the tale of the anti-communist liberals who, despite their grave doubts about sending Americans to fight in Southeast Asia, became key architects of America's war in Vietnam.
Like the bestselling The Wise Men, this dual biography is both an inside account of the making of US foreign policy in an era of nuclear weapons and a stunning group portrait of the heirs of the Wise Men?including Robert McNamara, George Ball, and Robert Kennedy?and the presidents they served.
In this definitive biography of McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, two of "the best and the brightest" who advised presidents about peace and war during the most dangerous years of the Cold War, Kai Bird pens a portrait of the fiercely patriotic, brilliant, and brazenly self-confident men who directed a steady escalation of a war they did not believe could be won.
Drawing on seven years of research, nearly one hundred interviews, and scores of still-classified top secret documents in a masterful reevaluation of America's actions throughout the Cold War and Vietnam, The Color of Truth tells the tale of the anti-communist liberals who, despite their grave doubts about sending Americans to fight in Southeast Asia, became key architects of America's war in Vietnam.
Like the bestselling The Wise Men, this dual biography is both an inside account of the making of US foreign policy in an era of nuclear weapons and a stunning group portrait of the heirs of the Wise Men?including Robert McNamara, George Ball, and Robert Kennedy?and the presidents they served.
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Simon & Schuster
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Person
Kai Bird is an acclaimed biographer and journalist. With Martin J. Sherwin, he won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was the inspiration for Christopher Nolan's Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Oppenheimer. Bird is Executive Director at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Duff Cooper Prize for History and is the recipient of numerous fellowships. His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He is an elected member of the prestigious Society of American Historians.
Content
- Intro
- Epigraph
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1. Harvey Hollister Bundy: The Patriarch
- 2. Groton: A Very Expensive Education
- 3. Yale: The "Great Blue Mother"
- 4. The War Years, 1941-1945
- 5. Stimson's Scribe
- 6. Portrait of a Young Policy Intellectual, 1948-1953
- 7. Dean Bundy of Harvard, 1953-1960
- 8. William Bundy and the CIA, 1951-1960
- 9. The Kennedy Years
- 10. The Cuban Missile Crisis
- 11. Autumn Assassinations
- 12. LBJ and Vietnam, 1964
- 13. Vietnam: The Decision, 1965
- 14. Vietnam Quagmire, 1966-1969
- 15. The Ford Foundation
- 16. Vietnam Aftermath
- Photographs
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Interviews
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Copyright
