Strictly for Grunts

The Unmaking of a President: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam By Herbert Y. Schandler Princeton, 419 pp., $16.50 The moral of this lengthy examination of the downfall of LBJ’s Vietnam policy, using the January 1968 Tet Offensive as primary focus, seems to be: Don’t pour your concrete too early. And don’t stand in it while it sets.

Its almost day-by-day narration of the debacle as it unfolded in Southeast Asia and Washington is exhaustively documented. Page after page, humanwave attacks of footnotes assault the reader. Herbert Y. Schandler, who “served in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense” and now specializes in national defense at the Library of Congress, has read everything and interviewed a raft of those present at the stillbirth. But has it helped?

SO

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S. K. Oberbeck

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The Unmaking of a President: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam By Herbert Y. Schandler Princeton, 419 pp., $16.50 The moral of this lengthy examination of the downfall of LBJ’s Vietnam policy, using the January 1968 Tet Offensive as primary focus, seems to be: Don’t pour your concrete too early. And don’t stand in it while it sets.

Its almost day-by-day narration of the debacle as it unfolded in Southeast Asia and Washington is exhaustively documented. Page after page, humanwave attacks of footnotes assault the reader. Herbert Y. Schandler, who “served in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense” and now specializes in national defense at the Library of Congress, has read everything and interviewed a raft of those present at the stillbirth. But has it helped?