A BRIGHT SHINING LIE

A powerful examination of the Vietnam War and one of its important champions

Author Neil Sheehan Publisher The Folio Society Price £125 Released Out now

Neil Sheehan’s opus needs little introduction to those with some knowledge of military history writing. Originally published in 1988, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam is a Pulitzer Prize winning examination of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War and biography of a key figure in his experience of the conflict, John Paul Vann. Sheehan was the journalist who originally published the Pentagon Papers with the New York Times in 1971, exposing the depth of involvement of the US government in Vietnam going back to 1945. A Bright Shining Lie is one of the most celebrated works about the Vietnam War, especially about the anger many Americans feel towards how it was led and managed.

Sheehan himself had been a relatively young journalist when he arrived in Vietnam to report on the war in 1962, not long after Vann, an Army lieutenant colonel, who advised the South Vietnamese infantry division south of Saigon from March 1962. Vann was a relatively unknown figure to the public, at least when this book was originally published, but a person very well known to the politicians, military and press connected with the Vietnam War. He had been an important point of contact for journalists in those early years, not least because he openly criticised America’s approach to the conflict in Vietnam, especially its relationship with the South Vietnamese, who he saw as corrupt.

But Vann was no antiwar activist working from within. He was a true believer in the Vietnam mission, despite being clear-eyed about its follies and mismanagement. Volume I of this work tells the story of Vann as Sheehan had known him up to his resignation from the Army in July 1963, with the Pentagon seemingly determined to punish him for his willingness to question the manner in which America was waging the war in Vietnam. It recounts those early years, the growing sense of unease, and jumps back and forth between the smaller story of Vann and the wider picture of the war in America and on the ground.

Volume II begins with a deeper dive into Vann’s life story, the man Sheehan came to discover through his research in later years, and then Vann’s return to Vietnam as a civilian working for USAID. From here Sheehan tracks the steep decline into chaos and bloodshed, increasingly meaningless and unnecessary, but throughout Vann remains a believer. Sheehan reveals a portrait of a complex man, both revered by those who worked under him and saw him as an honest voice amid a sea of misinformation, but also duplicitous in his own right, hiding his true self from those around him to maintain his credibility. He might generously be described as flawed, much as the Vietnam War might generously be called ill-judged. As Sheehan states, Vann “had exemplified [the war] in his illusions, in his good intentions gone awry, in his pride, in his will to win”.

As ever, this Folio edition is beautifully packaged and presented with maps and high-quality photographs, plus a new introduction by award-winning war journalist George Packer, suggested to Folio by Sheehan before he passed away in January 2021.

“One of the most celebrated works about the Vietnam War”