U.S. History Since 1945
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam
Several reviewers have called Halberstam's final work (he died in a car crash a few days after completing it) his best. Given his oeuvre, that's remarkable. The warmest praise has been reserved for his portraits of some of those who dominated the story, including MacArthur, Truman, Stalin and Mao. Nevertheless, the author keeps the ordinary American grunts who fought the war front and center to the greatest extent possible. Many of their "leaders," both military and civilian, come off poorly. One of the chief villains is MacArthur, whose grotesquely bloated ego and staggering incompetence led to many (most?) of the war's deaths. If there's any greater villain than MacArthur, it's miscalculation -- by virtually every major leader on every side of the conflict. Worse, perhaps, the war was to a great extent triggered by an oversight on the part of Dean Acheson, who inadvertently neglected to mention Korea in a key foreign policy address.
The Coldest Winter ... published September 25, 2007 by Hyperion
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
Commissioned by The Atlantic Monthly in 2002 but then rejected, a March 2006 incarnation of this work attracted a seismic response when it was published as a long article in the London Review of Books. Though the authors have gotten some historical facts wrong and sometimes used out-of-context quotes misleadingly, Mearsheimer and Walt are respected academics, and their basic assertions will strike most readers as self-evident. A loose coalition of interests, they say -- including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), evangelical Christians, neocons, think tanks and mainstream media -- have given the Israel lobby disproportionately strong and pernicious influence over U.S. foreign policy. This is exacerbated by the fact that Likud-leaning hardliners tend to dominate the lobby. The U.S. foreign policy that results elicits the hatred of millions of Arabs and Muslims. One key to the lobby's power lies in its effectiveness at attacking and smearing with charges of anti-Semitism those who'd critique, debate, or challenge in any way the "special" U.S.-Israel relationship.
*Also available on Audio CD
The Israel Lobby ... published September 4, 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11
by Amy B. Zegart
Today, six years after 9/11, scrutiny of the U.S. intelligence failures that helped facilitate the attacks is shifting from the province of journalists to that of historians and academics. One such investigator, Amy Zegart, now marshals a large body of evidence showing that U.S. intelligence missed nearly two dozen opportunities to disrupt the 9/11 attacks, not so much through the malfeasance of specific individuals, but because of deeply entrenched bureaucratic inertia of various kinds. Chief among these is the fact that in the decade preceding 9/11, U.S. agencies were stuck in Cold War and conventional law enforcement modes long after the Cold War had ended and it had become apparent that the rise of international terrorism demanded of them fresh thinking and tactics. "The single most important reason the United States remained so vulnerable on September 11," says Zegart, "was the stunning inability of U.S. intelligence agencies to adapt to the end of the Cold War." She reports that things haven't gotten much better since 9/11.
Spying Blind ... published August 10, 2007 by Princeton University Press
Over Here: How the G.I. Bill
Transformed the American Dream by Edward Humes
The G.I. Bill was one of the most successful social welfare programs in U.S. history both in its own right and in its much wider unintended but very positive consequences. Humes uses individual stories to help illustrate not only the program's successes but a few pronounced shortcomings as well, and wonders whether we might now emulate the program that provided educations
for fourteen future Nobel Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices, three presidents, a dozen senators, two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 17,000 journalists, 22,000 dentists -- along with a million lawyers, nurses, businessmen, artists, actors, writers, pilots, and others. All would owe their careers not to FDR's grand vision, but to that one modest proposal that was supposed to put the country back to where it had been before the war.
Over Here ... published October 2, 2006 by Harcourt
Revel with a Cause: Liberal Satire in Postwar America
by Stephen E. Kercher
While conventional wisdom and popular culture tend to portray 1950s America as crushingly conservative and decidedly unfunny, an associate history professor at UW-Oshkosh proves, in a scholarly but generally very entertaining style, that it ain't necessarily so. Not in liberal satirical circles at any rate. Kercher shows that the age of Joe McCarthy was also that of liberal wits such as Bill Mauldin, Herblock, Mort Sahl, Ernie Kovacs, Lennie Bruce, Dick Gregory and dozens of other political cartoonists and comedians whose material was at its core deeply subversive. The targets of their satire were, after all, the foundations of American society. Many well-known satirists whose work Kercher recounts seem, in context, much more political than one might otherwise have thought. This book should be a special pleasure for lefty readers over the age of 50 or so, for whom it should prove an enjoyable and engaging nostalgia trip.
Revel with a Cause ... published September 15, 2006 by University of Chicago Press
LBJ: Architect of American Ambition by Randall B. Woods
At just over 1,000 pages, this book's a mere pamphlet next to the multi-volume Lyndon Johnson biographies of Robert Caro and Robert Dallek. But Woods is kinder to the relentlessly complex Johnson than Caro or Dallek, reminding us that despite Vietnam and other infamies and tragedies, LBJ also shared Ralph Yarborough's progressivism and wrought great good. Woods' bio concludes at Johnson's funeral:
"I remember a black man hobbled up," Luci [Johnson's daughter] later said. "He was ninety-two years old. I tried to comfort him by telling him my father loved him and his people. 'Ma'am you don't have to tell me he loved me; he showed he loved me.' " Ralph Ellison, the distinguished black intellectual, spoke for the inarticulate. Spurned by conservatives and cosmopolitan liberals, LBJ, he predicted, would "have to settle for being recognized as the greatest American president for the poor and for the Negroes, but that, as I see it, is a very great honor indeed."
LBJ: Architect of American Ambition ... published August 1, 2006 by Free Press
Watchdogs of Democracy? by Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas has been a working journalist for over 60 years. She's covered John Kennedy and every president since. So if she's comfortable spending her time reminiscing and opining rather than producing cutting-edge reportage, I'm okay with that. And truth be told, at 85, the grande dame of White House correspondents is probably a better raconteur these days than she is a reporter or prose stylist.
But companionable as Thomas is here (and her reminiscences really are charming and interesting), she's kept her edge regarding her colleagues' failures in the runup to the Iraq War. Says she,
The naive complicity of the press and the government was never more pronounced than in the prelude to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The media became an echo chamber for White House pronouncements. Sadly, too, many statements were misleading and false on both sides. Reporters became stenographers instead of interrogators.
Watchdogs of Democracy? ... published June 20, 2006 by Scribner
Timothy Leary: A Biography by Robert Greenfield
The first full bio of the man who advised us to "turn on, tune in, drop out." Widely hailed as one of America's most brilliant young psychologists in the 1950s, Leary began experimenting with hallucinogens in the closing weeks of that decade. By the mid-1960s, he was a countercultural icon, rubbing shoulders with everyone from John Lennon to the Black Panthers. Nixon called him "the most dangerous man in America."
Sadly, Greenfield shows that Leary could be heinously selfish. It's probable that he betrayed many of those who'd been most loyal to him during his long flights from the American "justice" system. On the other hand, while it by no means excuses all of Leary's regrettable behavior, it's undeniable that federal authorities hounded him in ways and to degrees that Franz Kafka might have thought far-fetched. In 1965, when crossing from Mexico into America, his vehicle was found to contain marijuana, for which he was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. In 1970, he was sentenced to 10 years for two marijuana roaches.
Timothy Leary ... published June 1, 2006 by Harcourt
Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman by Barbara Leaming
A popular caricature of JFK goes something like this: he was a callow youth when he assumed office, having taken too lightly the awesome responsibility he'd won. But then he woke up, put his considerable charm and intellectual power to work and grew into the job. Yes, well ... we can forget all that now. Leaming shows that it's just not true. By the time the chronically ill Kennedy took office, he'd used his many convalescences to read voraciously in British literature and diplomatic history, and was especially determined to learn from the writings and legacies of Winston Churchill. Leaming also focuses on a group of British aristocrats with whom JFK became close through Kathleen Kennedy, Jack's greatest supporter in his family. One of the Brits, David "Ormsby Gore would speak in later years of Kennedy's 'twenty-five-year conversation' with Britain." It's an enjoyable biography that offers its readers fresh and compelling perspectives on Jack Kennedy.
Jack Kennedy: The Education of a Statesman ... published May 22, 2006 by W. W. Norton
Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War
by Mitch Weiss and Michael Sallah
In 2002 Toledo Blade reporters learned of the U.S. Army's coverup of the systematic murder of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by "Tiger Force," an elite unit that degenerated horribly when left in the field too long under criminally poor leadership. The series that resulted won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize; it's now been fleshed into a book. Its first half follows the platoon's descent into a murderous rampage through South Vietnam's Central Highlands from May to November 1967. Part two covers the Army's long investigation of the Tigers' many massacres and atrocities (such as the beheading of a baby), and the politically motivated coverup. The authors were featured on NPR's Talk of the Nation; riveting stuff. One caller identified himself as a Vietnam veteran and then excoriated the authors for what he seemed to perceive as their treachery.
*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD
Tiger Force ... published May 15, 2006 by Little, Brown
Barn Burning Barn Building: Tales of a Political Life, From LBJ to George W. Bush and Beyond by Ben Barnes & Lisa Dickey
When last we saw John Connolly / LBJ protege Ben Barnes, he was repeating for a large national audience claims he'd made in 1999: that he'd personally made the call that had enabled a young George Bush to dodge the draft in a Texas Air Guard unit -- with which Bush then maintained a famously flexible relationship. That Barnes may have been in a position to do so is a reflection of the vast political power he's wielded both in Texas and nationally for the last two generations. Here he traces one of the most important transformations in American political life: that of a once solidly Democratic Texas turning, over the course of about 40 years, the deep Republican red that it is today. Many of Barnes' business and political dealings have been called into question by many people, but it's hard to imagine anyone better qualified to recall the crucial history in which he's been a principal.
Barn Burning Barn Building ... published May 8, 2006 by Bright Sky Press
House of War: The Pentagon and the
Disastrous Rise of American Power by James Carroll
A Boston Globe columnist delivers an exhaustively documented, darkly lyrical polemic and Pentagon chronicle. In the process, he's won the praise of no less than Garry Wills, Howard Zinn, Bill McKibben, and Tracy Kidder. Carroll shows that the Pentagon -- to which he has personal connections -- has assumed a life of its own, effectively overseen by no one. He observes that the
proportion of the American budget that goes for "defense" [is] more than the rest of the world combined. After the Cold War, which ended nonviolently (despite all Pentagon predictions), unimagined opportunities for peace broke out across the globe, but the United States went to war again and again. After 9/11 this spirit resulted in a disastrous war in Iraq (led by George W. Bush and cheered by most Americans until it began going badly) and the destruction of America's place in the good opinion of mankind. The present crisis is the result of more than Bush's mistake. It follows from a momentum set running long ago in the Building by the Potomac.
*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD
House of War ... published May 4, 2006 by Houghton Mifflin
David Dellinger: The Life and Times
Of a Nonviolent Revolutionary by Andrew E. Hunt
David Dellinger was one of America's most influential peace and justice activists in the last half of the 20th century, yet many on the left know him peripherally, if at all. With this first full-scale biography, Canadian history prof Hunt explores Dellinger's historical significance as well as some of the striking contradictions of his long and eventful life. Though Dellinger's usually remembered as the eldest member of the Chicago Seven, his activism preceded that by more than three decades, having begun when he was at Yale in the 1930s. Twice imprisoned for World War II pacifism, he was later active in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. If the anti-Vietnam War movement of the late '60s could be said to have had a leader, Dellinger was probably it -- though one of his most often-repeated bits of advice was not to follow "leaders." Since the Chicago fiasco, his activism had continued until quite recently; he died two years ago at the age of 88.
David Dellinger ... published May 1, 2006 by NYU Press
Let Every Nation Know with Robert Dallek
As the years of Bush roll on and on, it's gotten difficult to remember that once upon a time American presidents could -- and sometimes did -- inspire the world with noble oratory and great ideas. It's true though, and one of the greatest of all presidential orators proves it with this book-and-CD package featuring Robert Dallek's fine background essays for over 30 audio tracks of John Kennedy at his verbal best.
Dallek begins with Kennedy's address to the National Press Club on Jan. 14, 1960 (which "set the tone for the campaign that followed") and walks the reader through other great JFK debates, speeches, and presentations, to (and a little beyond) one at San Anontio's Aerospace Medical Center on Nov. 21, 1963.
The publisher's posted two good audio excerpts: from Kennedy's 1961 U.N. address concerning a "nuclear sword of Damocles," and some of his comments at Amherst College in October 1963.
Let Every Nation Know ... published April 17, 2006 by Sourcebooks MediaFusion
31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us
The Government We Have Today by Barry Werth
[T]he Bush administration's beliefs about America and its mission in the world were born in the lessons that Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and other neocons took home from the end of the Nixon years and the early days of Gerald Ford's presidency. ... We're seeing history repeat -- and negate -- itself at the same time. It would be fascinating if it weren't tragic.
So says the author of this almost minute-by-minute chronology of the 31 days between Richard Nixon's resignation and Gerald Ford's pardon of him. Werth's been criticized for overemphasizing the Rumsfeld and Cheney angles, but he's generally gotten high marks for his success in presenting a detailed picture of crucial moment in American history, and of shedding some light on why Ford pardoned Nixon, and of explaining why Ford ran for president in 1976 after his initial inclinations against doing so.
*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD
31 Days ... published April 11, 2006 by Nan A. Talese
Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy by Tom Wicker
A retired NY Times reporter and author of many top fiction and nonfiction titles takes a quick look at Joe McCarthy's most destructive years: 1950-54. Wicker's McCarthy is no jackbooted thug, but a talented, needy, too-ambitious and sadly misguided man -- who, says the author, "may have been the most destructive demagogue in American history." Wicker shows that McCarthy was unpopular with his senate colleagues prior to his infamous Feb. 9, 1950 Wheeling W. Va. speech. But Republicans thereafter struck a Faustian bargain with a man who was, for a few terrible years, a publicity and electoral powerhouse who could cow even Dwight Eisenhower. The tenor of Shooting Star is reminiscent of Ed Murrow's closing comments at the conclusion of his most famous episode of See It Now. Murrow said of McCarthy, "He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it -- and rather successfully. Cassius was right. 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.' "
Shooting Star ... first published March 20, 2006 by Harcourt
My Detachment by Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder won a Pulitzer Prize for 1981's The Soul of a New Machine and he's since accumulated additional plaudits for such works as Among Schoolchildren and Mountains Beyond Mountains. His latest offering chronicles his Vietnam "detachment" -- a word he uses to denote both his Army unit and his private alienations. Kidder's often called a "master storyteller"; this work shows why. Like the vast majority of the 2.6 million American men and women who served in Vietnam, Kidder was not a combat soldier, but one whom those who were in the fight called an "REMF". His reminiscences are not war stories per se (if that's what you're after, try David Maraniss's They Marched Into Sunlight, also on CD), but illustrations of the generally undramatic but deeply insidious experiences most Americans had in Vietnam. Those who've served in the military may find Kidder's portrayal of military "culture" all too familiar; those who haven't will see why "FTA" was (and probably still is) such a popular slogan among the grunts.
*Also available, unabridged, on Audio CD.
My Detachment ... first published September 6, 2005 by Random House
top