Conversations with History: Neil Sheehan

Host Harry Kreisler welcomes Pulitzer Prize winning author Neil Sheehan, who reflects on the Vietnam War through the prism of American soldier John Paul Vann. Series: Conversations with History [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 7898]

• Category

  Education

[ayutthayatrojan]

Thank you for posting this excellent discussion with Neil Sheehan. I've just started reading 'A Bright Shining Lie' and this is really good background information. Thanks again!

[Robert de Maria]

This is a more of a conversation than an interview. Watch it and you will get a fine precis of John Paul Vann and Neli Sheehan's reportage.

[Kristofer Karlsson]

Excellent interview and a stunning book. The secretary of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund, wrote highly of Bright Shining Lie years ago, which is how I heard of it.

[Megan Jones]

A Bright Shining Lie is the best book I’ve read in 10 years. Hearing Neil Sheehan cogently explain his thoughts, feelings and motivations in this ‘Conversation’ is just the cherry on the top. Sheehan’s moral integrity is brilliantly on display and perfectly illustrates why the book is pitch perfect. Unfortunately, the lessons he recounts at the end were not learned. America’s foreign policy myopia and military might arrogance was tragically demonstrated by President Bush and his courtiers.

[rotkroete53]

This interview was conducted on November 14, 1988 (according to the front title) which was about the time I bought a paperback copy of A Bright Shining Lie. It is interesting to listen to Neil Sheehan interviewed about the book at around the time of its publication some 24 years ago now. Boy, that time has gone fast!

[Luke Foreman]

If the USA would have embraced Ho Chi Minh in 1945 there would have been no Vietnam war

[seanpdineen]

Sir robert Thompson, chief stragist of the british victory in malaysia, called Vann the greatest counterinsurgency expert on earth.

[tinawingfield]

Bright Shining Lie is the best book written on the Vietnam War.

Although Neil Sheehan was wrong on Diem - he was a nationalist and would have gone independent from America and saved many of the 57,000 lost America lives.

[Stumpy LawnmowerGuy]

the grove of trees at the burial ground was spared the axe by Vann himself who did not want to disturb the site. ironic bumped into him at the bridge over the Dak Bla in April of '72 and watched him read the riot act to some officers....both MACV American and ARVN....that let HIS bridge get damaged (either by a mortar shell or a satchel charge...never heard) heckuva guy

[centurion180ad]

Too bad that both Ellsberg's & Sheehan's publications, leave out THE critical component of this conflict. That would be the BANKERS & CIA dividing up Indochina into mutually destructive combatant entities that did not exist prior to their intervention, for the object of plundering resources (read: gold & heroin, TONS of heroin), enslavement and racist extermination.