Dereliction of Duty cover art

Dereliction of Duty

Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Dereliction of Duty

By: H. R. McMaster
Narrated by: H. R. McMaster
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £13.60

Buy Now for £13.60

About this listen

"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C." —H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion)

Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants.

A page-turning narrative, Dereliction Of Duty focuses on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

McMaster’s only book, Dereliction of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.

 Americas Asia Military Southeast Asia United States Vietnam War War Imperial Japan China Russia US Army
All stars
Most relevant
A serious look at the hubris and miscalculation that led America into and then perpetuated the US involvement in the Vietnam war.

The book covers the period of time where Americans arguably lost trust in her leaders as the government narrative about the countries foreign policy veered further and further from the truth under the leadership of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

The author is a combat commander who served his country in the Gulf conflict and was a military history professor at the United States Military Academy from 1994 to 1996 and attempted to serve his country as National Security Advisor in the administration of Donald Trump from February 2017 to March 2018 possibly putting some of the lessons of this book to work. Given the briefness of his tenure and the nature of his detractors I would guess he found a White-house somewhat more dysfunctional than the administrations he writes about with such damming hindsight..

If you have an interest in this period of history and found David Halberstam's "The best and the brightest" interesting then you should find this title equally engaging.

On a par with "The best and the brightest"

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lies and self deception at the highest levels of government. The deadly intellectual arrogance of Robert McNamara. Exclusion of dissenting opinion. All this led to the US war crime that was Vietnam. The entire sorry episode was predicted with uncanny accuracy both by a simulated war game and by one of the high level advisers (Green, I think) who was asked to take the other side of the argument, then ignored. A brilliant, forensic book and McMaster is also a good narrator.

Cool, factual analysis of the Vietnam catastrophe

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.