Harold Evans is
The Week’s editor-at-large and author of
The American Century. His autobiography,
My Paper Chase, is new in bookstores.
For the
Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books about reporting. One title on the list:
A Bright Shining Lie
by Neil Sheehan
Random House, 1988
This Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is a sophisticated yet spellbinding mix of history and biography: the story of the Vietnam War seen from the perspective of a 
military hero. John Paul Vann, who had fought in Korea, arrived in Saigon in 1962 as a U.S. military adviser to the South Vietnamese army. Soon perceiving that the war was being badly prosecuted, he developed ideas for countering guerrilla warfare, including the use of small-unit strikes instead of massive amounts of firepower and personnel. Vann dared to question the received wisdom, though, and suffered as a result—just as pilot Col. Billy Mitchell's career was wrecked during the 1920s in part by his insistent warnings that the Japanese might bomb Pearl Harbor. Neil Sheehan, who had been a correspondent in Vietnam, took 16 years to write his 800 pages, but the narrative moves fast, impelled by a passion for authenticity and truth.
Learn about
the other books on Evans' list.
Read about
Evans' six favorite biographies and memoirs.
--Marshal Zeringue
Harold Evans is The Week’s editor-at-large and author of The American Century. His autobiography, My Paper Chase, is new in bookstores.
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