The Coldest Winter, America and the Korean War.

I have been reading The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam with a mix of deep interest and frustration.  The subheading is American and the Korean War.

It is a slab of a book some seven and more pages long.  Iy could have done with one last round of editing to clean up some infelicities.  

That said, it is full of interesting facts and insights.  Further, its length and density ultimately carries the day.  Halberstam breaks up the chapters into various contextual struggle which determine many actions and decisions which otherwise seem incomprehensible.  There is the tense triangle of competing goals between the three Communist putative allies, North Korea, China and the Soviet Union.  There is the competition within the US military between General Douglas McArthur and his political and military superiors in Washington, D.C.  There are the tensions across Republican and Democrat parties based on the interests and commitments of the China Lobby.  

On and on.  So many layers of competing interests, personalities, contingent circumstances and other challenges.  On the one hand it stands in the way of telling a simple story.  On the other hand, it makes obvious why there was no simple story to be told.

So far, on balance, quite good.