As Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Robert S. McNamara was one of the chief architects of American foreign policy, and particularly of the strategy that propelled the U. S. into the Vietnam War. Though he at first firmly believed that fighting communism in East Asia was worth the loss of American lives, McNamara eventually found himself at odds with other members of the Johnson administration when he came to see the ever-escalating war as unwinnable. In the thirty years since he resigned his office, he has until now refused any public comment on the unpopular war with which he was so thoroughly identified. Drawing on his personal experience and a wealth of documentation, McNamara presents a classic insider account of how Vietnam policy grew, of exactly how we stumbled into the war and exactly why it quickly became almost impossible to pull out. Both personal and historic, his account reveals the trials of leadership, of how a generation's "best and brightest" led our nation into tragedy, and what we can learn from their mistakes.

ROBERT S. McNAMARA was secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, president of Ford Motor Company, and presdient of the World Bank. He has been active in economic development efforts across the globe and in the arms control and nonproliferation movements.