Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara

by Deborah Shapley and Deborah Shapely

Book Overview

A comprehensive biography of Robert S. McNamara follows his road to Secretary of Defense, where, during the 1960s, he shaped nuclear policy and orchestrated U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316782807
• ISBN13: 9780316782807
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 734 Pages
• Weight: 2.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Shows McNamara to be more than a Vietnam Villian...

A very good book and more surprising than one would imagine...most everyone's opinion of Robert McNamara, I'm sure, is that of the cold/calculating pro-Vietnam Defense chief, when, in fact, this book proves that there's much more to him than Vietnam and also proves (in my opinion) that the policy used in the Cuban Missile Crisis (gradual escalation...a perceived success) failed miserably when implemented in Vietnam. Shapley pulls no punches when she feels that McNamara is holding back or hiding something, but is also sympathetic when discussing other areas of his life (World War II, Ford company President...etc). I give this book 4 stars as opposed to 5 stars only because of the extensive detail in every aspect of MaNamara's life that's covered (I can only stomach so much about the World Bank and all their detailed policies). Generally a fine book and should be read along with McNamara's own "In Retrospect" to get the true picture of a brilliant and at the same time troubled man.

More Revealing than McNamara Himself

Of all the things in this book, a few stand out as being unique. While November of 1965 might not be of much importance for most people, it was particularly troubling for the Secretary of Defense. This book puts that time in Chapter 17, called "Two Enormous Miscalculations." The most unexpected event on November 2 was the death of "a thirty-one-year-old Quaker pacifist" named Norman Morrison, who had "drenched himself in kerosene and burned himself to death" in "the parking lot below the window of McNamara's office to send a message to him." (p. 354) The calculations of the chapter were military: setting how many American troops would be sent to Vietnam. I see McNamara using his position to express a deeper concern, in a memo to the president on December 6, 1965, that "the odds are about even that, even with the recommended deployments, we will be faced in early 1967 with a military standoff at a much higher level." (p. 359) This book exists mainly to show the nature of that problem. Those who write about these things as mere political concerns, and call such thinking the Vietnam Syndrome, can see, if they care to look here, that this was the real nature of the Vietnam experience as it was weighed in the scales of up and down, when it was happening. This book also meets McNamara head on at his usual level. For example, in the Epilogue, when the author "suggested quoting some things he had said, he snapped that he would deny having said them." (p. 614) If McNamara could have limited what he said to whatever was in his own best interest, he would never have told you people so much.

excellent - the book that needed to be written

This book caused Bob McNamara to write the book that he said he would not write. Deborah Shapley did an outstanding job. It was well researched covering millions of years that shaped mountains, rivers, races, wars and events that lead to what we called Vietnam. The role of Wilson after WW1 and '...let the peoples decide...' did not include Ho Chi Minh. If Japan and France could not control Vietnam, how could the U.S.A.? VERY Costly error.