The Icarus syndrome - Peter Beinart

In The Icarus Syndrome, Peter Beinart tells a tale as old as the Greeks?a story about the seductions of success. In dazzling color, he portrays three extraordinary generations:The Progressives who took America into World War I, led by Woodrow Wilson, the lonely preacher's son who for a moment became the closest thing to a political messiah the world has ever seen. The Camelot intellectuals who led America into Vietnam?men like General Maxwell Taylor, who quoted Thucydides in the original Greek, and Lyndon Johnson, who awoke screaming at the terror of being thought weak. Finally, George W. Bush and the post-cold war conservatives, who believed they could bludgeon the Middle East and liberate it at the same time. In each case, like Icarus, these leaders crafted