Robert S. McNamara was widely considered to be one of the most brilliant men of his generation. While he could be cold and arrogant, he was an invaluable friend to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and had a deeply moving relationship with Jackie Kennedy. McNamara was the leading advocate for American escalation in Vietnam, even after he concluded that the war was unwinnable.

In McNamara at War, Philip and William Taubman trace McNamara's career from a young faculty member at Harvard Business School and his Second World War service to his leadership of the Ford Motor Company and the World Bank. McNamara at War is a portrait of a man at war with himself-riven by melancholy, guilt, zealous loyalty and a profound inability to admit his flawed thinking about Vietnam.