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Andy Pham
Episode 3153 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature an interview conducted by Andy Pham about the new book McNamara at War with the authors. The book was written by William Taubman and Philip Taubman. It is a revelatory portrait of Robert S. McNamara, informed by newly discovered diaries, letters, and interviews with those closest to him.
Marc Selverstone is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor, Director of Presidential Studies, and co-chair of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs. He is the author of The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard, 2022), general editor of The Presidential Recordings Digital Edition (Virginia, 2010–), and co-editor of the Miller Center “Studies on the Presidency” series with the University of Virginia Press.
. A historian of the Cold War, he is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950 (Harvard), which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
William Taubman is the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Amherst College. His book, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of McNamara at War: A New History and Gorbachev: His Life and Times. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
His brother Philip Taubman, a former New York Times Washington Bureau Chief, is affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is the author of In the Nation’s Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz
Robert S. McNamara was widely considered to be one of the most brilliant men of his generation. He was an invaluable ally of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as U.S. secretary of defense, and he had a deeply moving relationship with Jackie Kennedy. But to the country, McNamara was the leading advocate for American escalation in Vietnam. He strongly advised Johnson to deploy hundreds of thousands of American ground troops, just weeks before concluding that the war was unwinnable, and for the next two and a half years, McNamara failed to urge Johnson to cut his losses and withdraw.
McNamara at War has been added to the recommended reading list of this podcast. You are encouraged to take advantage of the purchase link below where the book can be purchased online or by phone.
Listen to Episode 3153 and discover more about the new book McNamara at War from the authors.
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