In 1995 when Robert McNamara published his memoir In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam , he made an admission that stunned and sent shockwaves through friends and foes alike: “We were wrong,” he wrote. “Terribly wrong.”

That mea culpa came from not a scholarly observer, but the Secretary of Defense for Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. A man who purposefully pushed, planned, expanded an executed U.S. involvement in the war, even when he knew it was unwinnable.

That made him to many the real “villain” of the conflict, with the blood of tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese casualties if not on his hands, then at least smeared on his palm.

Using many new or never-before-released archives and information, history/political authors (and brothers) Philip and

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