Many books have been written on the tragic decisions regarding Vietnam made by the young stars of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Yet despite millions of words of analysis and reflection, no historian has been able to fully explain why such decent, brilliant, and previously successful men failed so badly. With this book - more than twenty years in the making - that changes. In Road to Disaster, acclaimed historian Brian VanDeMark draws upon decades of archival research, his own exclusive interviews with many of the officials involved with the war, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as defense secretaries for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Beyond that, Road to Disaster is the first account of the war to look at the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations through the prism of recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and organizational theory