Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War
By: Steve Sheinkin / Narrated By: Ray Porter
Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
Oh wow—This is for kids?!? No wonder I found it so accessible, so enjoyable, so, well, even I could grasp all the nuances!!!
I mean, like, I was totally blown away when, after finishing Most Dangerous and beginning to form my review, I went over and checked out other places to see what all other people thought of the book (VASTLY certain that I liked it!). It turns out that author Steve Sheinkin is a noted writer who writes BIG books on BIG history… for kids. Here, I’ve gotta believe it means for Teens, but still—I DID wonder at my seeming preternatural ability to suddenly see the Big Picture about an era, a happening, that was all over the place: Vietnam, the leaking of the Pentagon Papers (By the way, I hear tell that “The Pentagon Papers” makes for a horRENdous listening experience as an audiobook, so tho’ I’m greatly interested, I think I’ll give it a pass and will just say here and now that you shan’t be reading a review of it at any time in the future, near or otherwise).
I really liked how Sheinkin made not only Ellsberg but all of the people who come to play in this saga honest to God, down to earth people, with strengths and weaknesses, with lofty, sometimes flawed, ideals. I’ve always thought G. Gordon Liddy quite a character, ominous, kinda sorta evil incarnate, but here, especially in the opening scene, Sheinkin pared him down to a normal human being, rather comical, somebody who took himself waaaay too seriously and who seemed to be playing at being Evil Incarnate (A lead insert to feign a limp? Snort, giggle!). And I liked how he developed soooo slowly and methodically, Ellsberg from a bright and upcoming Cold Warrior into a diehard patriot devoted to ending the suffering in Vietnam. Tho’ Ellsberg begins constantly at odds with his Peace Rally girlfriend (Soon to become his wife), episodes wherein he sees the true nature of war in Vietnam soon have him coming to the other side, bravely doing what few people had the wherewithal, let alone guts, to do: Standing up to the administration of an increasingly malevolent and paranoid and unstable President (But don’t ask me about Edward Snowden: Sorry, but my jury’s still out on him, though at the end, Ellsberg says he not only condones and applauds what Snowden did, he’d do it himself).
The audiobook covers Ellsberg’s early idealism, the Tonkin incident (And how he’d like to hit HARD anyone who dared attack a U.S. ship), his exasperation with his girlfriend’s Peacenik nature, his excitement at being in Vietnam from the beginning of its unfoldment as a center of crises, all the way to seeing, really seeing how the ordinary people, the rural people, just want the war to stop. They don’t care about Communism, they don’t care about Democracies, they just want to get on with their daily lives, eking out a bare subsistence as they raise their families and try to live decently. He sees the careless atrocities perpetrated against them and their way of life, and when the chance presents itself and he sees the outright lying and manipulation of the U.S. government on display in the Pentagon Papers, he looks within himself and chooses to act.
I thought it was AWEsome that, tho’ he swears to his ex-wife to do all things (Copying the papers) by himself, he lets his children in on his activities, giving them a chance to work for what they might too believe in (Soon both his son AND young daughter are helping him copy materials!). I was tickled to death when I saw the top Review elsewhere was from his daughter, saying that this book was spot-on and free of glaring errors, and she made it sound as though she was having the time of her life in those early days. Good for her! All this back in a day when all had to be copied in a painstaking process, no flash drives in existence.
There’s a fair amount of suspense as written, even though we all KNOW how things turned out. I applaud Sheinkin. Then too, I applaud narrator Ray Porter’s (Yesssss, THAT Ray Porter, who I’ve listened to in a gazillion and six audiobooks!) performance. None of his usual quirkiness is on display here. Rather, he brings things together and sounds like a skilled documentarian, smooth, dry, with just a note of outrageous humor bringing things to life when it’s called for (Think: G. Gordon Liddy again).
I was just a little kid when the break-ins at Watergate occurred, when Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office was broken into, so what happens after he was dubbed an enemy of the state was all new to me, really (Seriously, the Watergate Hearings only served to dampen my youthful exuberance cuz my favorite variety shows were pre-empted). And it was all good as it was all written so well, with vast amounts of research done, bringing disparate loads of information together quite seamlessly.
Yup, so smooth, so well-done, even a Teen would find it accessible and gripping.
Long Live the Teen In Me! Huzzah!
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