Just like John Paul Vann was the "single essential American in Vietnam", A Bright Shining Lie is the single essential general history of the Vietnam War. Sheehan ably blends the overall history of the war, which we know all too well, with the career of one of it's strangest figures: the renegade Lt. Colonel, counter-insurgency expert, early war Cassandra and late war Dr. Pangloss, civilian General, good friend and depraved predator, who was John Paul Vann.

Lt. Col Vann went to Vietnam in 1962 as an adviser to an ARVN division in the Mekong Delta. An ambitious man and skilled soldier, he had some initial successes creating joint plans with his South Vietnamese counterpart, he was unable to force ARVN to fight to a conclusion with the Viet Cong, or mitigate the fundamentally corrupt nature of the Diem government. After the catastrophic battle of Ap Bac, which saw the Viet Cong stand and fight against helicopters and APCs for the first time, Vann began to oppose the relentless optimism of General Harkins and the Kennedy administration. Vann leaked his honest opinions about the incipient defeat to the Saigon press corps, including the author and David Halberstam (The Making of a Quagmire, The Best the the Brightest). Opposing the American strategy and the entire Pentagon bureaucracy, he argued for direct American control over the Vietnamese government to root out corruption, win over the rural peasantry, and contain the use of firepower in favor of an Americanized version of People's War. In after action reports and strategic leaks, Vann sacrificed his career to the truth, earning the admiration of the press corps as the most honest American officer of the war.

But this sacrifice was worthless, and a sop to his friends in the media. Behind the charismatic and energetic officer was a traumatized boy from the slums of Norfolk, the fatherless son of an alcoholic prostitute. Vann managed to make a career in the military, just missing WW2 and serving in Korea, but whether it was symbolic revenge on his mother or other issues, Vann's voracious sexual appetites destroyed first his marriage and then his career when a 15 year old babysitter accused him of raping her. Vann was acquitted, but the charge alone was enough to sink his chances of promotion to general. If he couldn't be on top in the Army, he wanted out.

The war was in Vann's blood like malaria, and after a dissatisfying year on civvie street he went back to Vietnam as a civilian with USAID. Believing himself more or less invulnerable to harm, Vann took insane risks driving rural roads beset with landmines and VC checkpoints (an aid was captured and spent 7 years in a VC prison camp), took up with two Vietnamese girlfriends, and fought a slow war in the bureaucracy that bore some fruit with the establishment of CORDS as a centralized arm for pacification, as opposed to scattered programs run through the State Department, the military, the CIA, Saigon, etc. Corruption in South Vietnam remained unsolved. Making alliances with McNamara's Office of Systems Analysis and Daniel Ellsberg (The Pentagon Papers) Vann survived bureaucratic infighting and the Tet Offensive to rise ever higher in the US government's efforts in South Vietnam, talking a new line that argued that with the Viet Cong decimated in the Tet offensive, victory was now possible. He thought NVA regulars were nearly as alien to the average South Vietnamese peasant as American soldiers, and that the political war could be won.

Vann's pacification campaign was little better than what had gone before, but he achieved his greatest success during the 1972 Easter Offensive. A fixture in Vietnam, and the senior American in II Corps, Vann took charge of the defenses, commanding two ARVN divisions, a paratrooper brigade, and all the attached American aviation assets, from light helicopters to strategic bombers. Vann was a demon in defense, omnipresent in his OH-58 Kiowa scout helicopter. He personally delivered supplies to besieged firebases, evacuated American advisers attacked by tanks, called in 'danger close' B-52 strikes and then flew over the crater fields taking potshots at stunned survivors with an M-16. Only Vann could have held the brittle ARVN command system together for the Battle of Kon Tum, which saved South Vietnam from being split in two by NVA tank columns. He had no time to celebrate his achievement, as his helicopter flew into a copse of trees returning from a victory celebration, killing everyone aboard in a fiery crash. Like a real world Colonel Kurtz, Vann went into Vietnam and became great and monstrous, too much so to ever return to America. The attendees at his funeral, the most senior men in the military, attested to Vann's success against all odds, but the fall of Saigon in 1975 rendered his efforts moot.

A Bright Shining Lie is the book that started me down this strange path. 45 or so Vietnam War books later, it still holds up as the best in its comprehensive sweep of the war from the 1930s to 1972, and its depiction of one of the wiser men who fought it. Yes, it's long. Yes, it's digressive on Vann's personal life, Vietnamese history, and the things Sheehan witnessed as a reporter. But it's the kind of true tribute that only a friend can make, with flaws and grand dreams treated with equal respect. This is a great book.