A deep and wide-ranging biography of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has won a $50,000 prize. Philip and William Taubman’s “McNamara at War” was announced Monday as this year’s winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History by The New York Historical.
The book traces McNamara’s rise as a business leader after World War II and his downfall as a chief proponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s who later concluded the conflict was unwinnable. He died in 2009, expressing long-standing regrets about the war.
Agnes Hsu-Tang, board chair of The New York Historical, described the work in a statement: “Philip and William Taubman’s ‘McNamara at War’ is a modern American epic chronicling Robert McNamara’s life in the mode of the classical Greek tragic cycle — arete (excellence), hubris (arrogance), ate (reckless folly), and nemesis (punishment of the prideful) — in the context of another tumultuous and divisive time in our nation’s history.”
Robert McNamara served as defense secretary for seven years across two Democratic administrations, leaving the Pentagon in February 1968. This followed President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement that McNamara was resigning to become president of the World Bank. During this period, McNamara differed with Johnson and military leaders over Vietnam War policy amid an escalating anti-war movement.
At a ceremony in April, the Taubman brothers will receive an engraved medal and be honored as American Historian Laureates. Previous winners include Robert Caro’s “The Passage of Power,” Ron Chernow’s “Washington: A Life” and Beverly Gage’s “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.”
