Includes an account of Norman R. Morrison, the Quaker who burned himself to death in front of the Pentagon.

Anything by Paul Hendrickson is worth reading, but this book offers a history lesson into a topic few of us want to delve into. Highly recommended. My review can be found here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/_1qsqsuzy8itx3/hub/The-Last-Draft ( )

2997 The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, by Paul Hendrickson (read 27 Jul 1997) This is a 1996 book which tells the story of Robert S, McNamara, who was born June 9, 1916, in San Francisco, went to U. of C. at Berkeley and to Harvard Business School and after World War II to Ford and then became JFK's Secretary of Defense. The book also tells of James C. Farley, crew chief on a helicopter in Vietnam whose picture was in Life on Apr 16, 1965, and of Norman Morrison, who on Nov 2, 1965, burned himself to death near the Pentagon, and of an Army nurse in Vietnam, and of a Vietnamese family. The writing is haunting and tremendously evocative. He is very hard on McNamara, and I do not subscribe to all he says. But one must admire all the work he went to to write this most compelling book. Most likely history will concur with his view of McNamara. I cannot but think of my own undistinguished record as to Vietnam: I supported the war until March of 1968 and then only gradually became against it since I was for Bobby Kennedy. Of course I was against it when Nixon was president, but the bloodbath I feared came when we left Vietnam. I do agree we should never have gotten into it in the first place, but getting out was hard. ( )