A revelatory portrait of Robert S. McNamara, informed by newly discovered diaries, letters, and interviews with those closest to him.

Robert S. McNamara was widely considered to be one of the most brilliant men of his generation. While he could be cold and arrogant, he was an invaluable friend to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as US secretary of defense and had a deeply moving relationship with Jackie Kennedy. McNamara was the leading advocate for American escalation in Vietnam during the summer of 1965, strongly urging Johnson to send hundreds of thousands of American ground troops just weeks before he concluded that the war was unwinnable. For the next two and a half years, despite his doubts, he failed to urge Johnson to cut his losses and withdraw.

In McNamara at War, Philip and William Taubman examine McNamara’s life of intense personal contradictions. They trace his career from a young faculty member at Harvard Business School and his World War II service to his leadership of the Ford Motor Company and the World Bank. McNamara at War is a portrait of a man at war with himself―riven by melancholy, guilt, zealous loyalty, and a profound inability to admit his flawed thinking about Vietnam before it was too late.