The Pentagon Papers

The Secret History of the Vietnam War

By: Neil Sheehan, E. W. Kenworthy, Fox Butterfield, Hedrick Smith, James L. Greenfield - foreword

Narrated by: James Anderson Foster

"The WikiLeaks of its day" (Time) is as relevant as ever to present-day American politics.

Not fake news! The basis for the 2018 film The Post, The Pentagon Papers are a series of articles, documents, and studies examining the Johnson Administration's lies to the public about the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War, bringing to light shocking conclusions about America's true role in the conflict.

Published by The New York Times in 1971, The Pentagon Papers riveted an already deeply divided nation with startling and disturbing revelations about the United States' involvement in Vietnam. The Washington Post called them "the most significant leaks of classified material in American history" and they remain relevant today as a reminder of the importance of a free press and First Amendment rights. The Pentagon Papers demonstrated that the government had systematically lied to both the public and to Congress.

This incomparable volume includes:

• The Truman and Eisenhower Years: 1945-1960 by Fox Butterfield
• Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam by Fox Butterfield
• The Kennedy Years: 1961-1963 by Hedrick Smith
• The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem: May-November, 1963 by Hedrick Smith
• The Covert War and Tonkin Gulf: February-August, 1964 by Neil Sheehan
• The Consensus to Bomb North Vietnam: August, 1964 - February, 1965 by Neil Sheehan
• The Launching of the Ground War: March-July, 1965 by Neil Sheehan
• The Buildup: July, 1965 - September, 1966 by Fox Butterfield
• Secretary McNamara's Disenchantment: October, 1966 - May, 1967 by Hedrick Smith
• The Tet Offensive and the Turnaround by E. W. Kenworthy
• Analysis and Comment
• Court Records
• Biographies of Key Figures

With a brand-new foreword by James L. Greenfield, this edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story is sure to provoke discussion about free press and government deception, and shed some light on issues in the past and the present so that we can better understand and improve the future.

©2018 Neil Sheehan, E. W. Kenworthy, Fox Butterfield, Hedrick Smith (P)2018 Brilliance Audio, Inc., all rights reserved

couldn't pay attention

i really tried to listen but the narrators voice is so vanilla and business like that I end up zoning out and miss paragraphs at a time.

Not appropriate for audio.

Narration: stilted, boring, burdensome---reason enough to avoid listening.

Content: important for archives but unless you are insured to robotic narration, skip this one.

great book ! The inside story of VN war

quite long reading but really interesting: the debate behind the key decisions in VN. Narrator great as well

A necessary read to understand America’s war in Vietnam.

I’ve read several reviews that say that this book is uninteresting, boring, poorly performed, etc. and recommending to skip it; if your goal is to listen for fun and aren’t particularly interested in the subject matter this may be correct. However, if your goal is to better understand American foreign policy broadly, the role of the CIA and covert operations abroad, the mentality of the American leaders making decisions at the time, the cold war ideology of the US or the war of American aggression in Vietnam this is one of the books that should be considered an absolute necessity to read.

Many history books on this app are dry or read by a narrator that isn’t the most exciting to listen to. I personally did not find the narrators voice or cadence particularly grating like some seemed to have. I will say that the way the chapters are broken up is incomprehensible. They seemingly broke the book up randomly where the chapter will just end and go into another chapter right in the middle of a paragraph and even at least one instance where the next chapter starts in the middle of a sentence. I don’t really understand why it was done that way… Still, that shouldn’t deter anyone who is interested in this subject from listening to this book. Just know that you may need to pause it in the middle of what they mark as chapters to take a break and not rely on the built in timer on the app.

Why Vietnam?

This book answers in detail why we were in Vietnam, how we got in and eventually reasons we lost Vietnam. The read was interesting yet exhausted. I have a better understanding of the subject.