A BRIGHT SHINING LIE - John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

SHEEHAN, Neil.

Biographies & Memoirs

JONATHAN CAPE.

From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history–and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger. Sheehan melds biography and history, politics and science, to create a sweeping narrative that transports the reader back and forth from individual drama to world stage. The narrative takes us from Schriever’s boyhood in Texas as a six-year-old immigrant from Germany in 1917 through his apprenticeship in the open-cockpit biplanes of the Army Air Corps in the 1930s and his participation in battles against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the Second World War. On his return, he finds a new postwar bipolar universe dominated by the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union. Inspired by his technological vision, Schriever sets out in 1954 to create the one class of weapons that can enforce peace with the Russians–intercontinental ballistic missiles that are unstoppable and can destroy the Soviet Union in thirty minutes. In the course of his crusade, he encounters allies and enemies among some of the most intriguing figures of the century: John von Neumann, the Hungarian-born mathematician and mathematical physicist, who was second in genius only to Einstein; Colonel Edward Hall, who created the ultimate ICBM in the Minuteman missile, and his brother, Theodore Hall, who spied for the Russians at Los Alamos and hastened their acquisition of the atomic bomb; Curtis LeMay, the bomber general who tried to exile Schriever and who lost his grip on reality, amassing enough nuclear weapons in his Strategic Air Command to destroy the entire Northern Hemisphere; and Hitler’s former rocket maker, Wernher von Braun, who along with a colorful, riding-crop-wielding Army general named John Medaris tried to steal the ICBM program. The most powerful men on earth are also put into astonishing relief: Joseph Stalin, the cruel, paranoid Soviet dictator who spurred his own scientists to build him the atomic bomb with threats of death; Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the ICBM program just in time to save it from the bureaucrats; Nikita Khrushchev, who brought the world to the edge of nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and John Kennedy, who saved it. Schriever and his comrades endured the heartbreak of watching missiles explode on the launching pads at Cape Canaveral and savored the triumph of seeing them soar into space. In the end, they accomplished more than achieving a fiery peace in a cold war. Their missiles became the vehicles that opened space for America. From the Hardcover edition.

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon

History

World

Random House Audio |

In 1989, nearly 15 years after the end of the Vietnam War, the author returned to Vietnam. This book is an account of that trip. Visiting Hanoi for the first time, he talks to the soldiers and politicians who won the war and catalogues the fruits of victor: a continuing American trade embargo; crumbling hotels and govemment buildings, vestiges of the city's French colonial past; a ragged economy, and omnipresent shabbiness and squalor. In Saigon he is deluged with memories as he tracks down former acquaintances, ponders the transition from American-fed boomtown to vanquished backwater, and tries to piece together how people who fought for the South have fared under the rule of their former enemies. Filled with insight, emotion and brilliant reportage, this book is a shattering portrait of a country still reeling from the effects of American intervention.

Two cities : Hanoi and Saigon

Picador

In March 1966, off the coast of Viet Nam, Lieutenant Commander Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter was releived of command of the destroyer escort U.S.S. Vance. He hadbeen her captain for ninety-nine days. The dispute over what happened aboard the Vance during those three months grew into one of the major controversies in the United States Navy in over a decade -- "The Arnheiter Affair." This is the engrossing story.

THE ARNHEITER AFFAIR

Sheehan's tragic biography of John Paul Vann is also a sweeping history of America's seduction, entrapment and disillusionment in Vietnam. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

Historical

Random House]

A Bright Shinning Lie reveals the truth of the war in Vietnam as it unfolded before the eyes of john Paul Vann: the arrogance and professional corruption of the U.S. military system of the 1960's.

A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

Leaders & Notable People

Random House Value Publishing

After the War Was Over

Travel

Asia

The Pentagon Papers: as published by the New York times,

Bantam]

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Bright Shining Lie revisits the scene of his magisterial account of the war in Vietnam and reveals the country that is just beginning to emerge from the war's ashes. "Enlightening . . . mesmerizing . . . luminously clear."--The New York Times. From the Trade Paperback edition.

After the War Was Over: Hanoi and Saigon

From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history–and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger. Sheehan melds biography and history, politics and science, to create a sweeping narrative that transports the reader back and forth from individual drama to world stage. The narrative takes us from Schriever’s boyhood in Texas as a six-year-old immigrant from Germany in 1917 through his apprenticeship in the open-cockpit biplanes of the Army Air Corps in the 1930s and his participation in battles against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the Second World War. On his return, he finds a new postwar bipolar universe dominated by the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union. Inspired by his technological vision, Schriever sets out in 1954 to create the one class of weapons that can enforce peace with the Russians–intercontinental ballistic missiles that are unstoppable and can destroy the Soviet Union in thirty minutes. In the course of his crusade, he encounters allies and enemies among some of the most intriguing figures of the century: John von Neumann, the Hungarian-born mathematician and mathematical physicist, who was second in genius only to Einstein; Colonel Edward Hall, who created the ultimate ICBM in the Minuteman missile, and his brother, Theodore Hall, who spied for the Russians at Los Alamos and hastened their acquisition of the atomic bomb; Curtis LeMay, the bomber general who tried to exile Schriever and who lost his grip on reality, amassing enough nuclear weapons in his Strategic Air Command to destroy the entire Northern Hemisphere; and Hitler’s former rocket maker, Wernher von Braun, who along with a colorful, riding-crop-wielding Army general named John Medaris tried to steal the ICBM program. The most powerful men on earth are also put into astonishing relief: Joseph Stalin, the cruel, paranoid Soviet dictator who spurred his own scientists to build him the atomic bomb with threats of death; Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the ICBM program just in time to save it from the bureaucrats; Nikita Khrushchev, who brought the world to the edge of nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and John Kennedy, who saved it. Schriever and his comrades endured the heartbreak of watching missiles explode on the launching pads at Cape Canaveral and savored the triumph of seeing them soar into space. In the end, they accomplished more than achieving a fiery peace in a cold war. Their missiles became the vehicles that opened space for America.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SHEEHAN, Neil.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by SHEEHAN, Neil.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SHEEHAN, Neil.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A BRIGHT SHINING LIE - John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon

Two cities : Hanoi and Saigon

THE ARNHEITER AFFAIR

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

After the War Was Over

The Pentagon Papers: as published by the New York times,

After the War Was Over: Hanoi and Saigon

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon