Author: Sean J. McLaughlin
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813177766
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Despite French President Charles de Gaulle's persistent efforts to constructively share French experience and use his resources to help engineer an American exit from Vietnam, the Kennedy administration responded to de Gaulle's peace initiatives with bitter silence and inaction. The administration's response ignited a series of events that dealt a massive blow to American prestige across the globe, resulting in the deaths of over fifty-eight thousand American soldiers and turning hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese citizens into refugees. This history of Franco-American relations during the Kennedy presidency explores how and why France and the US disagreed over the proper western strategy for the Vietnam War. France clearly had more direct political experience in Vietnam, but France's postwar decolonization cemented Kennedy's perception that the French were characterized by a toxic mixture of short-sightedness, stubbornness, and indifference to the collective interests of the West. At no point did the Kennedy administration give serious consideration to de Gaulle's proposals or entertain the notion of using his services as an honest broker in order to disengage from a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control. Kennedy's Francophobia, the roots of which appear in a selection of private writings from Kennedy's undergraduate years at Harvard, biased his decision-making. The course of action Kennedy chose in 1963, a rejection of the French peace program, all but handcuffed Lyndon Johnson into formally entering a war he knew the United States had little chance of winning.
Author: Peter Kross
Publisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 1935487876
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Ten months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Warren Commission reported that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone, killed the president on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Oswald had no confederates, nor did any foreign power aid him in his deadly deed. Case closed. However, what most Americans do not know is that one day after the assassination, the FBI deported a known French assassin-a member of the militant, anti-Charles de Gaulle organization called the OAS. Jean Souetre was sent to either Mexico or Canada. He was involved in anti-de Gaulle terrorist activities in Europe and even tried to recruit the CIA in his efforts to oust the French President. During his career, he used at least 11 identities, including those of two real people. Why was a known French assassin in Dallas on the exact day that the president of the United States was killed, and what role, if any, did he play in the monstrous deed? This book delves into three major areas of study: (1) the investigation of Jean Souetre and the two other men whose identities he used; (2) the investigation of the identities of two European assassins, QJ/WIN and WI/ROUGE, and their use in the CIA’s assassination unit called ZR/RIFLE-Executive Action; and (3) the role of the CIA in the drug trade after World War II. Chapters include: The First Assassin; The Mafia and Uncle Sam; The Heroin Trail; MKULTRA; QJ/WIN and Patrice Lumumba; The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence “Assassination Reports”-The CIA and Lumumba; Who Was Souetre?; Who Was Mertz?; The Steve Rivele Investigation; The Guns of Dallas; more.
Author: Arthur Meier Schlesinger (Jr.)
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin
ISBN:
Category : Politics, Practical
Languages : en
Pages : 1112
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Book Description
"The Special Assistant to President Kennedy describes the historic events in which John F. Kennedy participated during his three years in the White House." --
Author: William R. Keylor
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442236760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
In this definitive history, William R. Keylor traces the tumultuous relationship between Charles de Gaulle and a host of other key twentieth-century figures: his former mentor Marshal Philippe Pétain, who headed the collaborationist government in the southern French city of Vichy as the German army occupied the northern two-thirds of the country; Sir Winston Churchill, the British prime minister whose government supported and financed de Gaulle and the Free French, but who clashed with the French leader on a number of hot-button issues; and, most critically, the six American presidents from FDR to Nixon. Keylor uses the metaphor “thorn in the side” to emphasize the fact that challenges from the intrepid French leader were often an annoyance to the Americans, who all had many more important issues to deal with—World War II for Roosevelt and Truman, the Cold War for Eisenhower, and the Vietnam War for Kennedy and Johnson. Richard Nixon alone had an excellent relationship, but the two men overlapped for only four months before de Gaulle’s retirement. Thoroughly researched and deeply knowledgeable, this gripping book will appeal to all readers interested in contemporary French and US history.
Author: Christian Plume
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
Author: Caroline Kennedy
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 1401303951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
To mark John F. Kennedy's centennial, celebrate the life and legacy of the 35th President of the United States. In 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy recorded seven historic interviews about her life with John F. Kennedy. Now, for the first time, they can be read in this deluxe, illustrated eBook. Shortly after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, with a nation deep in mourning and the world looking on in stunned disbelief, Jacqueline Kennedy found the strength to set aside her own personal grief for the sake of posterity and begin the task of documenting and preserving her husband's legacy. In January of 1964, she and Robert F. Kennedy approved a planned oral-history project that would capture their first-hand accounts of the late President as well as the recollections of those closest to him throughout his extraordinary political career. For the rest of her life, the famously private Jacqueline Kennedy steadfastly refused to discuss her memories of those years, but beginning that March, she fulfilled her obligation to future generations of Americans by sitting down with historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and recording an astonishingly detailed and unvarnished account of her experiences and impressions as the wife and confidante of John F. Kennedy. The tapes of those sessions were then sealed and later deposited in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum upon its completion, in accordance with Mrs. Kennedy's wishes. The resulting eight and a half hours of material comprises a unique and compelling record of a tumultuous era, providing fresh insights on the many significant people and events that shaped JFK's presidency but also shedding new light on the man behind the momentous decisions. Here are JFK's unscripted opinions on a host of revealing subjects, including his thoughts and feelings about his brothers Robert and Ted, and his take on world leaders past and present, giving us perhaps the most informed, genuine, and immediate portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy we shall ever have. Mrs. Kennedy's urbane perspective, her candor, and her flashes of wit also give us our clearest glimpse into the active mind of a remarkable First Lady. In conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy's Inauguration, Caroline Kennedy and the Kennedy family are now releasing these beautifully restored recordings on CDs with accompanying transcripts. Introduced and annotated by renowned presidential historian Michael Beschloss, these interviews will add an exciting new dimension to our understanding and appreciation of President Kennedy and his time and make the past come alive through the words and voice of an eloquent eyewitness to history.
Author: Richard Reeves
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439127549
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 822
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Book Description
President Kennedy is the compelling, dramatic history of JFK's thousand days in office. It illuminates the presidential center of power by providing an indepth look at the day-by-day decisions and dilemmas of the thirty-fifth president as he faced everything from the threat of nuclear war abroad to racial unrest at home. "A narrative that leaves us not only with a new understanding of Kennedy as President, but also with a new understanding of what it means to be President" (The New York Times).
Author: Ted Sorensen
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060798718
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 582
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Book Description
In this gripping memoir, John F. Kennedy's closest advisor recounts in full for the first time his experience counseling Kennedy through the most dramatic moments in American history. Sorensen returns to January 1953, when he and the freshman senator from Massachusetts began their extraordinary professional and personal relationship. Rising from legislative assistant to speechwriter and advisor, the young lawyer from Nebraska worked closely with JFK on his most important speeches, as well as his book Profiles in Courage. Sorensen encouraged the junior senator's political ambitions—from a failed bid for the vice presidential nomination in 1956 to the successful presidential campaign in 1960, after which he was named Special Counsel to the President. Sorensen describes in thrilling detail his experience advising JFK during some of the most crucial days of his presidency, from the decision to go to the moon to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK requested that the thirty-four-year-old Sorensen draft the key letter to Khrushchev at the most critical point of the world's first nuclear confrontation. After Kennedy was assassinated, Sorensen stayed with President Johnson for a few months before leaving to write a biography of JFK. In 1968 he returned to Washington to help run Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Through it all, Sorensen never lost sight of the ideals that brought him to Washington and to the White House, working tirelessly to promote and defend free, peaceful societies. Illuminating, revelatory, and utterly compelling, Counselor is the brilliant, long-awaited memoir from the remarkable man who shaped the presidency and the legacy of one of the greatest leaders America has ever known.
Author: Mark J. White
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349140562
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
Leading Kennedy scholars along with a group of younger historians have mined recently declassified documentation in order to re-examine many of the key issues surrounding JFK's time in the White House: Vietnam, Cuban missile crisis, Berlin crisis, space race, and others. Rejecting the idolatry and bitterness evident in so many previous works on JFK, this study adopts an evenhanded, eclectic approach. The result is a less caricatured, more compelling view of the Kennedy presidency.
Author: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812994930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
An inspiring look at the historic foreign policy triumph of John F. Kennedy’s presidency—the crusade for world peace that consumed his final year in office—by the New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Civilization, Common Wealth, and The End of Poverty The last great campaign of John F. Kennedy’s life was not the battle for reelection he did not live to wage, but the struggle for a sustainable peace with the Soviet Union. To Move the World recalls the extraordinary days from October 1962 to September 1963, when JFK marshaled the power of oratory and his remarkable political skills to establish more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and a dramatic slowdown in the proliferation of nuclear arms. Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, led their nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two superpowers came eyeball to eyeball at the nuclear abyss. This near-death experience shook both leaders deeply. Jeffrey D. Sachs shows how Kennedy emerged from the Missile crisis with the determination and prodigious skills to forge a new and less threatening direction for the world. Together, he and Khrushchev would pull the world away from the nuclear precipice, charting a path for future peacemakers to follow. During his final year in office, Kennedy gave a series of speeches in which he pushed back against the momentum of the Cold War to persuade the world that peace with the Soviets was possible. The oratorical high point came on June 10, 1963, when Kennedy delivered the most important foreign policy speech of the modern presidency. He argued against the prevailing pessimism that viewed humanity as doomed by forces beyond its control. Mankind, argued Kennedy, could bring a new peace into reality through a bold vision combined with concrete and practical measures. Achieving the first of those measures in the summer of 1963, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, required more than just speechmaking, however. Kennedy had to use his great gifts of persuasion on multiple fronts—with fractious allies, hawkish Republican congressmen, dubious members of his own administration, and the American and world public—to persuade a skeptical world that cooperation between the superpowers was realistic and necessary. Sachs shows how Kennedy campaigned for his vision and opened the eyes of the American people and the world to the possibilities of peace. Featuring the full text of JFK’s speeches from this period, as well as striking photographs, To Move the World gives us a startlingly fresh perspective on Kennedy’s presidency and a model for strong leadership and problem solving in our time. Praise for To Move the World “Rife with lessons for the current administration . . . We cannot know how many more steps might have been taken under Kennedy’s leadership, but To Move the World urges us to continue on the journey.”—Chicago Tribune “The messages in these four speeches seem all too pertinent today.”—Publishers Weekly
