Dereliction of Duty

H. R. McMaster, a major in the U.S. Army when the book appeared in 1997, argues that the Vietnam War was lost in Washington before Americans took sole responsibility for the fighting in 1965. Using five years of research, including formerly classified meeting transcripts, many obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, taped phone calls, diaries and interviews, he traces the secret decisions of November 1963 to July 1965 that deepened the American commitment. McMaster blames President Lyndon Johnson and his top civilian and military advisers, with Robert McNamara's role central, and shows how the Joint Chiefs of Staff were largely shut out. The book grew out of his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

James Mattis included it on the list of favorite books in an appendix to Call Sign Chaos.