Pulitzer Prize General Non Fiction Winner
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
by Neil Sheehan
Summary
A monumental biography of John Paul Vann, the maverick U.S. Army officer turned civilian advisor whose career mirrored America's deepening entanglement in Vietnam. Sheehan uses Vann's life—his early dissent, his ambition, his moral contradictions—as a lens onto the larger strategic and ethical failures of the war. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and declassified records, the book stands as one of the most thorough indictments of U.S. policy in Southeast Asia.
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Historical Context & Significance
Sheehan spent 16 years researching and writing this book. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and is considered one of the definitive accounts of the Vietnam War's tragic failures.