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    The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
    The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
    The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
    Audiobook27 hours

    The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

    Written by Max Boot

    Narrated by Henry Strozier

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In chronicling the adventurous life of legendary CIA operative Edward Lansdale, The Road Not Taken definitively reframes our understanding of the Vietnam War. In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908- 1987), the man said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene's The Quiet American, best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how Lansdale pioneered a "hearts and mind" diplomacy, first in the Philippines, then in Vietnam. It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America's giant military bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to never before-seen documentsincluding long-hidden love lettersBoot recasts this cautionary American story, tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish "T. E. Lawrence of Asia" from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the humiliating American evacuation in 1975. Bringing a tragic complexity to this so-called "ugly American," this "engrossing biography" (Karl Marlantes) rescues Lansdale from historical ignominy and suggests that Vietnam could have been different had we only listened. With reverberations that continue to play out in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken is a biography of profound historical consequence.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 9, 2018
    ISBN9781501923951
    The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
    Author

    Max Boot

    A senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and renowned military historian, Max Boot is a regular contributor to the New York Times and other publications. Author of two previous books, he lives in New York.

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    Reviews for The Road Not Taken

    4.5/5

    26 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Well researched. Necessary reading for anyone interested in America’s experience in Vietnam or counterinsurgency in general.
    • 4/5
      A biography of Edward Lansdale, military/CIA man in the Philippines and then Vietnam, with a side trip to helping plan Castro’s overthrow (though he was apparently not involved with the exploding cigar plot, he did throw out some other bizarre ideas, like a light show to convince the populace that the Second Coming was imminent). Lansdale was a hard-core anticommunist, but one convinced that the alternatives offered to people in Asia had to be democratic and anti-corruption. He advised leaders to train the military to help, not terrorize, the civilian populace and to hold free elections. He didn’t always succeed, and even his success (the Philippines) wasn’t lasting, but Boot makes a compelling case that if his methods had been more influential in Vietnam, the cost in human lives and suffering would have been much lower even if the Communists had ultimately still won.