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Because Our Fathers Lied: A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today
Maybe someday
36
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
11/100Critics
61/100Scholars
Author:
Craig McNamara
Publisher:
Little, Brown and Company
Date:
May 10, 2022
Craig McNamara came of age in the political tumult and upheaval of the late 60s. While Craig McNamara would grow up to take part in anti-war demonstrations, his father, Robert McNamara, served as John F. Kennedy's Secretary of Defense and the architect of the Vietnam War. This memoir offers a picture of one father and son at pivotal periods in American history.
What The Reviewers Say
... loving but brutally honest.
... staggering.
... a valiant and abrasive attempt to sift through a legacy his father refused to abjure. If Camelot really was a kind of court of midcentury kings, a high watermark for liberal capitalism distant from our moment of fracture, how fortunate we are to have such a thoughtful account of that world from someone who was born into it. Unlike many memoirs from this milieu and journalistic treatments of it, Craig McNamara’s book evinces the sort of hippie humanity that his dad, in his own way, worked to squash.
... a stunning, deeply personal look at his life as the son of the prime shaper of America’s Vietnam War policy, secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara. In searing detail, the younger McNamara reveals reams of hitherto unreported details about his controversial father’s family life and how the elder McNamara’s lies and obfuscations about the war led to their estrangement.
