The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey - Hardcover

Vistica, Gregory L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312285477 ISBN 13: 9780312285470

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003

Synopsis

On the night of February 25, 1969, an inexperienced, 25-year-old lieutenant, Bob Kerrey, led a commando raid on an isolated hamlet called Thanh Phong in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. While witnesses and official records give varying accounts, one thing is certain: around midnight, Kerrey and his men killed nearly two dozen unarmed women and children.

What happened that night and why? It's a terrible secret that Kerrey has borne for more than thirty years. Kerrey went on to do heroic things in Vietnam and later as a politician. Since World War II, he is only Medal of Honor winner to sit as a member of Congress. In many ways, Kerrey's life following that tragic mission has been a struggle for redemption.

So is Bob Kerrey a war hero or war criminal? Gregory L. Vistica, who uncovered the Thanh Phong atrocities in a widely-praised cover story for The New York Times Magazine, searches the entire span of Kerrey's life to answer that question.. From his rural boyhood in Nebraska, to his gut wrenching Navy SEAL training, to his aborted run for President, Kerrey's life will become a vehicle for understanding the Vietnam generation shaped in the 50s and sharpened by the tumultuous 60s.

The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey is an incredible story and a modern morality tale about a man of compassion and promise trapped by a horrible secret.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory L. Vistica spent nearly three years researching and finally breaking the story about Bob Kerrey and that awful night in Thanh Phong. He is also the author of Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U. S. Navy, a book based on his award-winning reporting about the Tailhook scandal., which led to historic reforms in the military. He is a producer with 60 Minutes II and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. Formerly the national security correspondent for Newsweek, Vistica is the recipient of the Peabody Award, a George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Reviews

Vistica writes for the New York Times Magazine (in which a cover piece appeared that is the basis for this book) and is a 60 Minutes II producer; he is also the author of Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy (1996). Four years of research stand behind his new book, which is about Senator Bob Kerrey--and, as the author insists, his account is underscored by his "belief that there is no higher calling for a journalist than the honest pursuit of the truth." And that truth, as he reconstructs it, is that Kerrey's adult life and career represent one long attempt to assuage his guilt over a huge, haunting secret he "carried . . . through three decades of what was, by all appearances, a storybook existence: war hero, self-made millionaire businessman, governor, and a United States senator." The secret? In Vietnam, 25-year-old Lieutenant Kerrey led a commando raid on a village, and 21 unarmed women and children were killed. In Vistica's emotion-laden account of how the secret was borne by Kerrey all those years, how it informed his post-Vietnam goals and aspirations and achievement, and how he dealt with the situation once his secret became public, we see a prominent politician as very much a human being; as a result, this book is an important contribution to the literature of contemporary American politics. Brad Hooper
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Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312285477
• ISBN 13: 9780312285470
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352