'I Had a Part in a Great Failure' - McGeorge Bundy

TIMES BOOKS TO PUBLISH NEW BOOK THAT DRAWS ON A UNIQUE COLLABORATIVE
RELATIONSHIP WITH MCGEORGE BUNDY

NEW YORK, July 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Editorial Director Paul Golob announced
today that Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, will publish
LESSONS IN DISASTER: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Gordon
M. Goldstein, a new work of history that draws on the author's unique
collaborative relationship and extensive interviews with the late McGeorge
Bundy, the national security adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon
B. Johnson, who in the last years of his life embarked on a retrospective
assessment of the decisions that led to America's entanglement in the Vietnam
War. Times Books will publish LESSONS IN DISASTER in November 2008.

Goldstein, an international affairs specialist who earned his Ph.D. at
Columbia University, was enlisted by Bundy to work with him on a book about
the genesis of the Vietnam War. With Bundy's death in 1996, that manuscript
could not be completed. Goldstein has built on their collaborative
relationship and deepened his study of Bundy's role to produce an original and
provocative work of presidential history that distills the essential lessons
of America's path to war in Vietnam. "McGeorge Bundy was among the last of the
architects of the Vietnam war to look back at his time in office," states
Goldstein, "and to grapple with how and why this disaster in U.S. foreign
policy occurred and his own role in it."

LESSONS IN DISASTER has already received advance praise from the eminent
presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who says, "No American who has lived
through the Iraq experience will doubt how important it is for us to
understand why and how American presidents take our country to war. Key to
understanding how John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson took the nation into Vietnam
is the story of McGeorge Bundy's service to both men as national security
adviser. Thanks to his many long and penetrating talks with Bundy, his
assiduous study of the written record, and his mastery of the interplay among
personality, politics, and national security strategy, Gordon Goldstein has
brought us a dispassionate, powerful, and brilliant assessment of McGeorge
Bundy's performance during the years he was given his cardinal moment in
history. Goldstein's book helps us comprehend how Americans were led, step by
step, into the abyss of Vietnam. It also provides crucial lessons for future
presidents, members of Congress, and citizens as we grapple with the problems
of where, when, and how to apply American power around the world."

"Times Books is proud to be publishing LESSONS IN DISASTER," says Golob.
"Gordon Goldstein has written one of those rare works of history that places
readers inside the room with the key players while also providing deeply
incisive analysis informed by the reflections and observations that one of
those participants shared with him in the latter years of his life."

SOURCE Times Books

Claire McKinney, Vice President - Director of Publicity of Times Books,
+1-646-307-5241, claire.mckinney@hholt.com