The title referred to Kennedy's "whiz kids"—leaders of industry and academia brought into the administration—whom Halberstam characterized as insisting on "brilliant policies that defied common sense" in Vietnam, often against the advice of career U.S. Department of State employees.

Halberstam's book offers details on how decisions were made in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led to the war, focusing on the period from 1960 to 1965 but also covering earlier and later years up until publication.

In response to Sir William Draper's letter defending one of Junius' targets and attacking their anonymous critics, Junius wrote: To have supported your assertion, you should have proved that the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corsica has been shamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, and your own Manilla ransom most dishonourably given up, it has all been owing to the malice of political writers, who will not suffer the best and brightest characters (meaning still the present ministry) to take a single right step, for the honour or interest of the nation.In the introduction to the 1992 edition, Halberstam stated that he had used the title earlier in an article for Harper's Magazine, and that Mary McCarthy criticized him in a book review for incorrectly referencing the line in the Shelley poem.

[1] Victor Saul Navasky, writing in The New York Times, said it was Halberstam's "most important and impressive book", citing its "compelling and persuasively presented thesis.

[4] The New York Times's Marc Tracy reported that Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon was reading the book in February 2017.