About this item
In chronicling the adventurous life of legendary CIA operative Edward Lansdale, The Road Not Taken definitively reframes our understanding of the Vietnam War. In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908- 1987) , the man said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene's The Quiet American, best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how Lansdale pioneered a "hearts and mind" diplomacy, first in the Philippines, then in Vietnam. It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America's giant military bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to neverbefore-seen documents -- including long-hidden love letters -- Boot recasts this cautionary American story, tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish "T. E. Lawrence of Asia" from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the humiliating American evacuation in 1975. Bringing a tragic complexity to this so-called "ugly American," this "engrossing biography" (Karl Marlantes) rescues Lansdale from historical ignominy and suggests that Vietnam could have been different had we only listened. With reverberations that continue to play out in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken is a biography of profound historical consequence. 54 photographs; 3 maps
About the Author
Max Boot is a bestselling author, historian, and policy analyst who has been called one of the "world's leading authorities on armed conflict" by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a columnist for the Washington Post, a global affairs analyst for CNN, and the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam" and "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present." His other books include the widely acclaimed: "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power" and "War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today." He has been called "a master historian" by the New York Times and a "a penetrating writer and thinker" by The Wall Street Journal. For more information, see www.maxboot.net.
