Mr. Sheehan gave five 30-minute interviews about his book. The first interview was titled “The Funeral of John Paul Vann.”
Neil Sheehan won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, his biography of Lt. Colonel John Paul Vann, published by Random House. Vann was a field adviser in Vietnam when U.S. involvement was just beginning. He was disillusioned by the corruption in the South Vietnamese regime, and when his superiors wouldn’t listen to him, he briefed reporters such as Sheehan secretly. Through the biography of Vann, Sheehan gives a broad history of the war in Vietnam.