Ahalf-century ago this year, journalist David Halberstam published The Best and the Brightest, his massive and influential account of America’s war in Vietnam. Filled with scathing judgments of the chief dramatis personae, the book remains eminently entertaining. Read against the backdrop of the present-day crisis over Ukraine, it retains considerable relevance. Despite the decades that have passed since it first appeared, it’s a book that President Joe Biden would do well to check out of his local library.