"A compelling portrait of a man once serenely confident, searching decades later for self-understanding."--Richard Holbrooke, The New York Times Book Review

I had a part in a great failure. I made mistakes of perception, recommendation and execution. If I have learned anything I should share it."

These are not words that Americans ever expected to hear from McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. But in the last years of his life, Bundy--the only principal architect of Vietnam strategy to have maintained...