RaveFinancial Times (UK)George Packer has delivered a deeply affecting and ultimately tragic biography of a distinguished diplomat ... Packer brilliantly describes Holbrooke’s personal journey through each episode, exploring along the way how these wars came to shape him — and how Holbrooke applied his considerable guile, fortitude and intelligence to shape the course of the conflicts ... In many ways this book is also a collective portrait of that generation who came of age during the Vietnam war. This terrifically talented and fantastically flawed cohort of men come to life in these pages ... This book is a complex rendering of a complicated man ... In an elegant and thoroughly accessible fashion, Packer has taken pains to tell Holbrooke’s story fully and fairly.
Max Hastings
RaveFinancial Times\"In Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, Hastings has brought his flair for military histories to the search for a deeper reckoning about the war and its complex legacy ... This exceptionally thorough and hefty tome lands like a piece of live ordnance in a firefight. It is a worthy addition to the small library of books Hastings has produced in his prolific career ... What is important about this book are the fresh perspectives on the war that are given centre stage in the retelling ... Hastings has taken us back to the battlefields of Vietnam and the results as depicted in these pages are at once illuminating and tragically confounding.\
