'The Best and the Brightest' by David Halberstam

Wow. What an opus I just finished.
This book is over 800 pages. Not my first time reading a book of that length but this was some dense reading. It could accurately be titled 'A biography of the best and the brightest: a look at the men who got us into Vietnam'. Each chapter of the 27 seemed to be centered around one of the leading players of the Vietnam War. I learned about Dean Rusk, Max Taylor, Mcnamara, Gen Westmoreland, Mac and Bill Bundy, John McNaughton and, of course, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

The biographies were in depth, engaging and, most importantly, pointed towards what led them to the decisions they made. I have a deeper understanding of how Vietnam happened and, in so many ways, how it should have been avoided.

It was a terrible, wanted by few, occurance that many people fought to avoid and others dreaded, with good reason. The real culprits seemed to be the military, itching to flex it's power. They were given a situation in which they could apply pressure and exact a result and this they did, with unfortunate success.

Halberstam is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist for his work during the vietnam era and he is very worthy of such a prize. I've moved on to my next book and it is a throwaway paperback fbi thriller. I MISS his great writing. He has a knack for keeping the dialogue real and the inner monologue genuine.

I hope to read more Halberstam. Maybe next time I have a month free and a desire for a dense read.

'The Templar Legacy' by Steve Berry

I never thought I would say this: Dan Brown did a decent job writing 'The Da Vinci Code'. I have firmly believed it was poorly written prose wrapped around a decent mystery concept. I have now read the same book written with even worse prose. 'The Templar Legacy' attempts the same goal as Dan Brown's first famous novel but with less believable dialogue, descriptions of character feelings that drip with cliche, and wholly unrealisitic sexual tension.

I can appreciate, as I did with Dan Brown, the intertwining of fact, fiction and imagination in regards to the Templars but I cannot handle the descriptions that actually made me groan outload. 'She couldn't hide her anger well but she swallowed it enough to continue' is an almost accurate example. Mr. Berry, I feel you were just trying too hard. In a book that is about unraveling a mystery, we care far less about the character's feelings. It's really not what drives story. Less is more.

All that said, he sold millions of copies of this and other books. I think. At the very least, he finished a novel and got it published. That's impressive. I hope I don't get talked into reading another of his writings but God bless him.