On BookTV today, they had a panel of book reviewers at Yale. David Bromwich and
Charles McGrath appeared to be the most informed and interesting of the group
(Francine Prose, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Judith Shulevitz). Although McGrath
seemed to be a tired but pragmatic New Yorker, his argumentation was by far the 
clearest. Seated nicely against this intellectual backdrop was Bromwich, whose
idiosyncratic phrasing highlighted how much he lived in his head. But, Bromwich
certainly dropped some knowledge, and it is his list of reviewers to read 
that I'm going to follow:

<ol>
<li>Pauline Kael
<li>John Updike
<li>George Orwell
<li>Randall Jarrell
</ol>

<p>
The Day of Critique continues with a reading of Senator Gravel's <a
href="http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent1.html">Pentagon
Papers</a> .
This <i>post mortem</i> examination of a failed
policy yielded many lessons, but most importantly:

<ol>
<li>Historical and Current Context - This information is absolutely necessary
to the maintenance of beneficial international relations. We had poor to no
intelligence about Viet Nam until the early 60's, well after we had committed
ourselves.
<li>Goals - Public goals which are clearly ranked guide our decision-makers. 
The policy of containment was valued higher than the policy of fostering 
national 
determinism and open societies. 
<li>Periodic Critical Evaluation - If we monitor our policies, we can quickly
catch errors in judgment, and learn from our mistakes. If we ignore our
policies' performance, we risk compounding multiple failures into an 
explosive situation. The detiorating situation in Viet Nam was answered
by varying tactics, not by evaluating the causes of deterioration.
</ol>

<p>

(<small>I didn't read every page that Daniel Ellsberg stole, just
the summaries of what is publicly available; this was 30 years ago, so it
should be <a href="http://www.lib.msu.edu/foxre/declass.html">FOIA
declassified</a>, but the only reference I find is to the hardbound copies
in LBJ's libary</small>). 
<p>