I became fascinated by Robert McNamara after watching the documentary The Fog of War, which I actually found really interesting. This was a moment where I got to place a proper face and personality to a figure I'd been studying and I really engaged with hearing his story and take on things. That doesn't mean to say I agree or believe everything he said. After all, I'm a historian and we tend to take things with a pinch of salt and a lot of cynicism.

However, his book was certainly much more in depth and detail than the documentary, for obvious reasons. It's hard to fit 300 pages of words into an hour documentary, well. But I still find McNamara to be a very complex character even at the end of this book. I know he polarises a lot of American society and the Vietnam War is certainly a topic that has caused a lot of outrage and upset over the years. People have criticised McNamara for attempting to use this book as a way of cleansing himself of all his fault. Admittedly, I do think he fails to take responsibility in his book for his actions. But realistically, I don't think it's now about addressing fault, and I think this is a man who did feel the weight of the burden he carried as Secretary of Defense.

Overall, this book was useful for my own research for study purposes, but also an interesting insight into the mind of what once was a very powerful man, and to see some of the impact of Vietnam War on those who were in office. He was a little too statistic heavy in his quantifications for my liking, but the narrative was mostly pretty readable.