air power and would negotiate peace after experiencing limited bombing. Others saw that, even during World War II, strategic bombing united the civilian population against the aggressor and did little to hinder industrial output. After placing a few thousand Americans in harm's way, it became politically easier to send hundreds of thousands with the promise that, given sufficient numbers, they could protect themselves and that to abandon Vietnam would mean the earlier investment in money and blood would be lost. The book shows that the gradual escalation allowed the Johnson Administration to avoid early negative publicity and criticism from Congress and to avoid a direct war against the Chinese, but it also reduced the likelihood of either victory or withdrawal. Origin of the title The title may have come from a line by Percy Bysshe Shelley in his work "To Jane: The Invitation" (1822): Best and brightest, come away! Shelley's line may have originated from English bishop and hymn writer Reginald Heber in his 1811 work, "Hymns. Epiphany": Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid. A still earlier, and more pertinent, use of the phrase is in the letter of Junius published February 7, 1769, in the Public Advertiser. There Junius uses it mockingly and ironically in reference to King George III's ministers, whose capacities he had disparaged in his first letter the previous month. In response to Sir William Draper's letter defending one of Junius' targets and attacking their anonymous critics, Junius wrote: To have supported your assertion, you should have proved that the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corsica has been shamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, and your own Manilla ransom most dishonourably given up, it has all been owing to the malice of political writers, who will not suffer the best and brightest characters (meaning still the present ministry) to take a single right step, for the honour or interest of the nation. In the introduction to the 1992 edition, Halberstam stated that he had used the title earlier in an article for Harper's Magazine, and that Mary McCarthy criticized him in a book review for incorrectly referencing the line in the Shelley poem. Halberstam claimed he had