The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms - Hardcover

Bird, Kai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684809702 ISBN 13: 9780684809700

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1998

Synopsis

This dual biography of two brothers whose legal and political careers spanned World War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam is based on scores of interviews with the subjects, their families, and their colleagues, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the making American foreign policy. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

This dual biography of the brothers who were top aides to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson is an outstanding study of the mindset that allowed the United States to become slowly ensnared in the Vietnam War. Both McGeorge Bundy, a national security advisor, and William Bundy, a senior official at the Pentagon and State Department, were liberal anti-Communists trying to balance American interests in Southeast Asia between what they considered the dangerous extremes of both Left and Right. They came under enormous criticism for their roles, but author Kai Bird argues that newly declassified documents "show that the Bundys and other decision-makers registered deep doubts about the American enterprise in Vietnam and did so far earlier than most historians had thought." This hardly exonerates them, in Bird's view: "They knew how badly the war was going as early as 1964-65, yet they found a way to persist in folly." Their tale didn't end in the 1960s. McGeorge Bundy, for instance, went on to head the Ford Foundation for 13 years, where he played an enormously important role in shaping modern liberalism. Bird, a Guggenheim Fellow and contributing editor to The Nation, tells the Bundys' story with great clarity and sound judgment; The Color of Truth is a surprisingly absorbing book. --John Miller

About the Author:

Kai Bird is the author of The Chairman: John J. McCloy: The Making of the American Establishment and a contributing editor of The Nation. A Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in Washington, D.C.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0684809702
• ISBN 13: 9780684809700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 496