Kennedy's Quest for Victory : American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963

Kennedy's Quest for Victory : American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963 PDF Author: Thomas G. Paterson Professor of History University of Connecticut
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198021488
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Also available in paperback. Please see page 00 for a full description.

Kennedy's Quest for Victory : American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963

Kennedy's Quest for Victory : American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963 PDF Author: Thomas G. Paterson Professor of History University of Connecticut
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198021488
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Also available in paperback. Please see page 00 for a full description.

Engineers of Victory

Engineers of Victory PDF Author: Paul Kennedy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 158836898X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Paul Kennedy, award-winning author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and one of today’s most renowned historians, now provides a new and unique look at how World War II was won. Engineers of Victory is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts account of the strategic factors that led to Allied victory. Kennedy reveals how the leaders’ grand strategy was carried out by the ordinary soldiers, scientists, engineers, and businessmen responsible for realizing their commanders’ visions of success. In January 1943, FDR and Churchill convened in Casablanca and established the Allied objectives for the war: to defeat the Nazi blitzkrieg; to control the Atlantic sea lanes and the air over western and central Europe; to take the fight to the European mainland; and to end Japan’s imperialism. Astonishingly, a little over a year later, these ambitious goals had nearly all been accomplished. With riveting, tactical detail, Engineers of Victory reveals how. Kennedy recounts the inside stories of the invention of the cavity magnetron, a miniature radar “as small as a soup plate,” and the Hedgehog, a multi-headed grenade launcher that allowed the Allies to overcome the threat to their convoys crossing the Atlantic; the critical decision by engineers to install a super-charged Rolls-Royce engine in the P-51 Mustang, creating a fighter plane more powerful than the Luftwaffe’s; and the innovative use of pontoon bridges (made from rafts strung together) to help Russian troops cross rivers and elude the Nazi blitzkrieg. He takes readers behind the scenes, unveiling exactly how thousands of individual Allied planes and fighting ships were choreographed to collectively pull off the invasion of Normandy, and illuminating how crew chiefs perfected the high-flying and inaccessible B-29 Superfortress that would drop the atomic bombs on Japan. The story of World War II is often told as a grand narrative, as if it were fought by supermen or decided by fate. Here Kennedy uncovers the real heroes of the war, highlighting for the first time the creative strategies, tactics, and organizational decisions that made the lofty Allied objectives into a successful reality. In an even more significant way, Engineers of Victory has another claim to our attention, for it restores “the middle level of war” to its rightful place in history. Praise for Engineers of Victory “Superbly written and carefully documented . . . indispensable reading for anyone who seeks to understand how and why the Allies won.”—The Christian Science Monitor “An important contribution to our understanding of World War II . . . Like an engineer who pries open a pocket watch to reveal its inner mechanics, [Paul] Kennedy tells how little-known men and women at lower levels helped win the war.”—Michael Beschloss, The New York Times Book Review “Histories of World War II tend to concentrate on the leaders and generals at the top who make the big strategic decisions and on the lowly grunts at the bottom. . . . [Engineers of Victory] seeks to fill this gap in the historiography of World War II and does so triumphantly. . . . This book is a fine tribute.”—The Wall Street Journal “[Kennedy] colorfully and convincingly illustrates the ingenuity and persistence of a few men who made all the difference.”—The Washington Post “This superb book is Kennedy’s best.”—Foreign Affairs

To Move the World

To Move the World PDF 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

Ask Not

Ask Not PDF Author: Thurston Clarke
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101478055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
2013 is the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s assassination. A narrative of Kennedy's quest to create a speech that would distill American dreams and empower a new generation, Ask Not is a beautifully detailed account of the inauguration and the weeks preceding it. During a time when America was divided, and its citizens torn by fears of war, John F. Kennedy took office and sought to do more than just reassure the American people. His speech marked the start of a brief, optimistic era. Thurston Clarke's portrait of JFK is balanced, revealing the president at his most dazzlingly charismatic and cunningly pragmatic. Thurston Clarke's latest book, JFK's Last Hundred Days, is currently available in hardcover.

The Road to Camelot

The Road to Camelot PDF Author: Thomas Oliphant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501105582
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
A “provocative reconstruction of John F. Kennedy’s ‘five-year campaign’ for the White House” (The New Yorker), beginning with his bold, failed attempt to win the vice presidential nomination in 1956 and culminating when he plotted his way to the presidency and changed the way we nominate and elect presidents. John F. Kennedy and his young warriors invented modern presidential politics. They turned over accepted wisdom that his Catholicism was a barrier to winning an election. They hired Louis Harris to become the first presidential pollster. They twisted arms and they charmed. They turned the traditional party inside out. They invented The Missile Gap in the Cold War and out-glamoured Richard Nixon in the TV debates. Now “Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie, both veteran political journalists, retell the story of this momentous campaign, reminding us of now forgotten details of Kennedy’s path to the White House” (The Wall Street Journal). The authors have examined more than 1,600 oral histories at the John F. Kennedy library; they’ve interviewed surviving sources, including JFK’s sister Jean Smith, and they draw on their own interviews with insiders including Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. From the start of the campaign in 1955, “The Road to Camelot brings much new insight to an important playbook that has echoed through the campaigns of other presidential aspirants as disparate as Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The authors take us step by step on the road to the Kennedy victory, leaving us with an appreciation for the maniacal attention to detail of both the candidate and his brother Robert, the best campaign manager in American political history” (The Washington Post). “A must-read for fans of presidential history” (USA TODAY), this is “an excellent chronicle of JFK’s innovations, his true personality, and how close he came to losing” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

No End Save Victory

No End Save Victory PDF Author: David Kaiser
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465062997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
While Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first hundred days may be the most celebrated period of his presidency, the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor proved the most critical. Beginning as early as 1939 when Germany first attacked Poland, Roosevelt skillfully navigated a host of challenges -- a reluctant population, an unprepared military, and disagreements within his cabinet -- to prepare the country for its inevitable confrontation with the Axis. In No End Save Victory, esteemed historian David Kaiser draws on extensive archival research to reveal the careful preparations that enabled the United States to win World War II. Alarmed by Germany and Japan's aggressive militarism, Roosevelt understood that the United States would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict raging in Europe and Asia. However, the American populace, still traumatized by memories of the First World War, was reluctant to intervene in European and Asian affairs. Even more serious was the deplorable state of the American military. In September of 1940, Roosevelt's military advisors told him that the US would not have the arms, ammunition, or men necessary to undertake any major military operation overseas -- let alone win such a fight -- until April of 1942. Aided by his closest military and civilian collaborators, Roosevelt pushed a series of military expansions through Congress that nearly doubled the size of the US Navy and Army, and increased production of the arms, tanks, bombers, and warships that would allow America to prevail in the coming fight. Highlighting Roosevelt's deft management of the strong personalities within his cabinet and his able navigation of the shifting tides of war, No End Save Victory is the definitive account of America's preparations for and entry into World War II. As Kaiser shows, it was Roosevelt's masterful leadership and prescience that prepared the reluctant nation to fight -- and gave it the tools to win.

Dark Victory

Dark Victory PDF Author: Dan E. Moldea
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504043502
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A “smoldering indictment” of the corrupt influences that rescued Ronald Reagan's career, made him millions, and shaped his presidency (Library Journal). Founded in 1924, the Music Corporation of America got its start booking acts into speakeasies run by such notorious Chicago mobsters as Al Capone. How then, in only a few decades, did MCA become the driving force behind music publishing, radio, recording artists, Hollywood, and the burgeoning television industry? Enter Ronald Reagan. By the late 1950s, Reagan was a passé movie actor. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was also MCA’s key client. With Reagan’s help, MCA would become the most powerful entertainment conglomerate in the world. And with MCA’s help, Reagan would secure a fortune (resulting in a federal grand jury hearing), be marketed to the public as a viable politician, and ascend to the presidency of the United States. But according to reporter Dan E. Moldea, there had always been another catalyst behind MCA: Ties to organized crime that reached back to the company’s inception—and through Reagan’s Teamster-backed candidacy—had never been severed. From the author of The Hoffa Wars, this is an epic and serpentine investigation into the insidious links among Hollywood, the Mob, and politics. Based on research of six thousand pages of previously classified documents, including the entirety of Reagan’s grand jury testimony, Moldea “has, through sheer tenacity, amassed an avalanche of ominous and unnerving facts. [Dark Victory is] a book about power, ego and the American way. Moldea has shown us what we don’t want to see” (Los Angeles Times).

Kennedy's Wars: Liberal Anti Communism; 2 Beyond Massive Retaliation; 3 The Third World Alternative; 4 Policies and People. Section 2 Berlin and Nuclear Statagy: 5 The New Strategy; 6 To Vienna and Back; 7 The Berlin Anomaly; 8 A Contest of Resolve; 9 The Wall; 10 Tests and Tension; 11 Flexible Resp

Kennedy's Wars: Liberal Anti Communism; 2 Beyond Massive Retaliation; 3 The Third World Alternative; 4 Policies and People. Section 2 Berlin and Nuclear Statagy: 5 The New Strategy; 6 To Vienna and Back; 7 The Berlin Anomaly; 8 A Contest of Resolve; 9 The Wall; 10 Tests and Tension; 11 Flexible Resp PDF Author: Lawrence Freedman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195152433
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
In 'Kennedy's Wars' noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace.

JFK and the Unspeakable

JFK and the Unspeakable PDF Author: James W. Douglass
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439193886
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
THE ACCLAIMED BOOK, NOW IN PAPERBACK, with a reading group guide and a new afterword by the author. At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up. Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.

Contesting Castro

Contesting Castro PDF Author: Thomas G. Paterson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195101201
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Describes Castro's insurrection from a 1955 fund raising trip to the United States to the Cuban Revolution.