About the Author

Neil Sheehan is the author of "A Bright Shining Lie," which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1989. He spent three years in Vietnam as a war correspondent for United Press International and "The New York Times" and won numerous awards for his reporting. In 1971, he obtained the Pentagon Papers, which brought the "Times" the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for meritorious public service. Sheehan lives in Washington, D.C. He is married to the writer Susan Sheehan.

Reviews

Advance praise for "A Fiery Peace in a Cold War"

"Neil Sheehan has triumphed again in this sweeping and absolutely fascinating book. Using the personal passion of one Air Force officer as a lens, Sheehan takes on the epic tale of how science, the military, and politics became interwoven during the Cold War. It's a crucially important topic, but also a colorful narrative tale filled with memorable characters such as Bennie Schriever and the geniuses he enlisted in his cause."
-Walter Isaacson, author of "Einstein: His Life and Universe "


Praise for "A Bright Shining Lie"

"Masterly . . . a compelling, graphic and deeply sensitive biography [and] one of the few brilliant histories of the American entanglement in Vietnam . . . Sheehan's skillful weaving of anecdote and history, of personal memoir and psychological profile, [gives] the book the sense of having been written by a novelist, journalist and scholar all rolled into one."
"-The New York Times"

"If there is one book that captures the Vietnam war in the sheer Homeric scale of its passion and folly, this book is it. Neil Sheehan orchestrates a great fugue evoking all the elements of the war."
"-The New York Times Book Review"

"A brilliant work of enormous substance and ambition. In telling one man's story ["A Bright Shining Lie"] sets out to define the fatal contradictions that lost America the war in Vietnam. It belongs to the same order of merit as "Dispatches", "The Best and the Brightest" and "Fire in the Lake"."
"-The Washington Post Book World"

"["A Bright Shining Lie"] is more than a biography. It is also a compelling and clear history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Mr. Sheehan's book . . . is the best answer to any American who asks: 'How could this have happened?'"
"-The Wall Street Journal"

Advance praise for "A Fiery Peace in a Cold War"
"Neil Sheehan has triumphed again in this sweeping and absolutely fascinating book. Using the personal passion of one Air Force officer as a lens, Sheehan takes on the epic tale of how science, the military, and politics became interwoven during the Cold War. It's a crucially important topic, but also a colorful narrative tale filled with memorable characters such as Bennie Schriever and the geniuses he enlisted in his cause."
-Walter Isaacson, author of "Einstein: His Life and Universe " Praise for "A Bright Shining Lie"
"Masterly . . . a compelling, graphic and deeply sensitive biography [and] one of the few brilliant histories of the American entanglement in Vietnam . . . Sheehan's skillful weaving of anecdote and history, of personal memoir and psychological profile, [gives] the book the sense of having been written by a novelist, journalist and scholar all rolled into one."
"-The New York Times"