A Bright Shining Lie
John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
by Neil Sheehan · first published 1988
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4recommended by
6HN commenters
2013–2025first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
Chronicles the military career of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, profiling his military and civilian roles in the Vietnam War.
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The parallels are striking. I just finished reading Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, which is a story of Vietnam told through the lens of the experience of one particular American officer, and later civilian consultant: John Paul Vann. I heartily recommend the book - winner of the National…
on “War Without End” ↗I'm also reminded of a line from Neil Sheehan's classic "A Bright Shining Lie" that has stuck with me since reading it: Men who succeed at an enterprise of great moment often tie a snare for themselves by assuming that they have discovered some universal truth.
on “A Truly Depressing Visit to JCPenney” ↗> They won because they took part in the war with a sense of righteousness. This belief is certainly reflected in one of the best books I've read about the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheehan, who was a reporter there throughout the war and devoted a large part of his life to chronicling it. He repeatedly shows how the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army), from commanders down to…
on “Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side” ↗…a subject-object interaction: it's about perception and reaction. Happy is about being stoked because YOU were lucky, nobody needs to witness it. Glad requires an other. Notably Neil Sheehan chose "A Bright Shining lie" for his amazing book. This is another very intellectual choice (like Juliet above by Shakespeare) by an author who clearly knows his etymology? It's about the tension between what was really going on…
on “Acronymy (Can we define every word as an acronym?)” ↗I’ve read War is a Racket. It’s a great piece and raises issues we all should think about. I also read A Bright Shining Lie, About Face, The Best and The Brightest and other books critical of the military [1, 2, 3]. Like I said in my previous comment, I have many issues with the military, but I’m also concerned when the elite…
on “Ask HN: If you're funded by the military, how do you tell people?” ↗…http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u... To simply equate socialism with Soviet control was always simplistic and a worldview that caused untold grief - possibly being a contributing factor to the start of the Vietnam War, as argued in A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan. Edit: The ultimate expression of those on the left as an "undifferentiated mass" was probably the original SIOP which would have attacked all…
on “Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien” ↗…be a place for temporary authoritarian governments to swoop in, sweep up the mess, and then hand over things to liberal democracies, but they don't hand over power easily. A book I read on Vietnam (A Bright Shining Lie) floated the idea that communism never delivered on its promise to make society more equitable, but communist revolutions have played a role in eliminating backwards feudal governments and clearing the…
on “Evidence That Parasite Prevalence Predicts Authoritarianism (2013)” ↗I'm reading a book about the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie, and it's making me realize how many problems are born out of how complicated large human organizations are. I mean, it's obvious when I write it like that, but I think we have this platonic ideal of…
on “Useless Windows 10 Features” ↗