24: The LBJ Edition

Steven M. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination--24 Hours Later: Lyndon B. Johnson's Pivotal First Day as President. New York: Basic Books, 2009. pp. xvii + 294.

Maybe you suspect that history is boring. Or, maybe you know that it's important and interesting, but it just seems like books take all the fun out of it. If any of that sounds familiar, then this book is for you.

The author, Steven M. Gillon is a fantastic researcher and a good writer, too. His topic is absolutely fascinating, and he's looked at tons of documents only recently declassified.

Most books about the Kennedy assassination deal with questions like: Who shot JFK? Was there more than one gunman? Was the assassination the result of a conspiracy? On and on it goes. Gillon's book is different. The author assumes that the Warren Commission got it right. There was one gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. And even though Oswald would have loved more attention from the Soviet Union and from Cuban authorities, he did what he did on his own.

Instead of dealing with those questions for the ten thousandth time, Gillon investigates what the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, experienced and what he did during the 24 hours after the assassination. Gillon reveals an LBJ who tried to do several things all at once:

• He tried to assure the American people that the devastating assassination of their president had not destroyed their government. For example, Johnson invited photographers to capture those moments that revealed continuity, as when he took the oath of office aboard Air Force One.
• He did his best to show deference to the people who were closest to the slain president, especially to his widow, Jackie Kennedy. Johnson told Mrs. Kennedy that there was no need for her to quickly vacate the White House. He reportedly said to her, "You stay as long as you want."
• He sought to connect his brand new presidency to the legacy of John Kennedy, and worked to consolidate his authority as the head of the executive branch of the U.S. government. During the first 24 following the assassination, Johnson repeatedly told White House staffers that he wanted them to stay on the job, and that he needed them more than they needed him.

Two of Gillon's main themes are Johnson's personal insecurities and the real disdain that many people who were closest to JFK felt for him. Above all, the dead president's brother and closest confidant, Robert F. Kennedy, hated Johnson.

The book comes packaged in seventeen short chapters, which makes it easy to take in one chapter at a time. It includes 14 black-and-white photos, 30 pages of endnotes, a brief "Note on Sources," and a good index.

Here's a C-SPAN video of Gillon talking about his book not long after it was published. Here is the New Books Network podcast interview with Gillon.

U.S. Presidents of the Twentieth Century

Interested in U.S. Presidents of the Twentieth Century? This list of seven books includes some of the better works that I have sampled so far. Any one of these would be a good pick. Happy reading!

Brands, H. W. Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. New York: Anchor Books, 2009.

Brands presents a full-scale biography of Roosevelt, a son of privilege who became a “traitor to his class” by appealing to and serving the interests of the American masses. The book argues that while FDR was not himself a radical, his presidency radically altered the way Americans viewed the role of the federal government in the lives of citizens, and the role of the U.S. in the world. Brands suggests that FDR’s political aspirations forever changed when a fifth cousin, Theodore, became the U.S. President, and later when FDR married Theodore’s niece, Eleanor Roosevelt, whom the President “gave away” at the wedding. From that time forward, FDR modeled himself after "Uncle Ted." Brands frequently quotes the letters and diaries of the main characters.

Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Dallek explored hundreds of manuscript and oral history collections before writing this 600-page biography of LBJ to the time he became U.S. Vice President. The author notes that former presidents eventually have a moderate legacy. Early disapproval is followed by a more-generous retrospective. Yet, as late as 1990, Johnson was still considered a complete failure, painted by the likes of Robert Caro as the megalomaniac who dragged America through Vietnam, and who initiated the far-from-great Great Society. With this book, Dallek set out to initiate a more-balanced portrait of LBJ as a flawed but truly representative figure of mid-twentieth century America.

Dallek, Robert. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2003.

Unlike previous biographers of JFK, Dallek has produced a study that fully exploits "written contemporary documents, telephone and Oval Office tapes, . . . and oral histories" (ix). Above all, the author gained access to the big majority of Kennedy's medical records, which were then deciphered with the help of a physician. The records reveal that JFK as the picture of health was an incredible illusion, one that disguised serious problems and chronic pain. Dallek devotes many pages to the Kennedy family, to JFK's formative years, his experiences during World War II, and his political campaigns. Yet, the 1,033 days of JFK's presidency take up more than half of this massive book. Throughout, the author appears to be aiming for a rational, balanced interpretation of his subject.

Flippen, J. Brooks. Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011.

This book explores the significance of the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). Flippen observes that President Carter took for granted that he could retain the loyalty of fellow religious conservatives, while courting support from the left. Carter gave his blessing to initiatives related to the growth of feminism, the legalization of abortion, and equal rights for homosexuals. All along, such issues were becoming more partisan, with each side becoming more deeply entrenched. Flippen concludes that because each issue bore a religious dimension, the Carter Administration served as a catalyst for the rise of the Religious Right.

Link, Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954.

Link sought "to comprehend and re-create the political and diplomatic history" of the U.S." from the beginning of the disruption of the Republican party" to America's entrance into the First World War (xv). His treatment includes major sections on sweeping reform legislation enacted by Congress from 1913 to 1917, and the process by which the U.S. was drawn into the war. Link wrote only after he spent several years working through manuscript archives and periodical literature from the Wilson years. As the author put it, his book is based "almost exclusively upon research in the sources" (xv). A categorized 30-page "Essay on Sources" appears at the end.

McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Truman is a celebratory, full-scale biography of the 33rd U.S President. It runs to nearly 1,000 pages. Over the span of a decade, McCullough interviewed hundreds of associates and friends of Truman, and read almost everything previously written about him. The author concluded that Truman’s early experiences of struggle—as a farmer in Missouri and artillery officer during World War I—forged an upright character and legendary toughness that served him well. McCullough, a master storyteller, demonstrates the potential of history written for a popular audience. With this book, he single-handedly improved the image and increased the public stature of Harry S. Truman.

Wills, Garry. The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981.

Wills wrote this book in the wake of Senator Ted Kennedy’s unsuccessful run in 1980 for the Democratic presidential nomination. Like a political observer trained in family psychology, the author attempts to explain the unique privileges, burdens--and now failures-- of the youngest Kennedy son. He depicts it all as the result of the family’s development and abuse of power over many decades reaching back to the patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. This book presents an almost completely negative view of the Kennedy family and the presidency of JFK. Even his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, for which President Kennedy usually receives high marks, is criticized. This book was intended for a general, non-academic audience. It contains no documentation.

The Vietnam War: Three Important Titles

Interested in the Vietnam War? Here's a short list of books you might try. Considering that they are only three books, these represent a fairly wide array of style and interpretation. When it comes to viewpoint, the outlier is Mark Moyar's Triumph Forsaken. Moyar is a leading voice among so-called revisionist historians of the U.S. in Vietnam. Milam was the only one of the three authors to actually fight in Vietnam. Sheehan's book has the distinction of winning numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.

Milam, Ron. Not a Gentleman’s War: An Inside View of Junior Officers in the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Milam was a U.S. Army Infantry junior officer who served in Vietnam. Attempting to remain objective, he brings to his work an interest in defending the reputations of almost all of his fellow platoon leaders. Because Vietnam was a catastrophe for the U.S., finger pointing was inevitable. Much of the criticism was written by “angry colonels” who faulted junior officers. This trend was made all the more easy because of the reputation of the infamous William Laws Calley, Jr. Milam turns the tables, citing a number of poor decisions that were handed down to lieutenants in the field. These mistakes, combined with the ingenious, dirty tactics of the enemy, and other factors made Vietnam something other than “a gentleman’s war.”

Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

This is the first book in a proposed two-volume interpretive survey of the Vietnam War. The dividing line between this and a proposed second book comes at July 28, 1965, when President Johnson announced there would be a huge military build up in Vietnam. The author explains that his approach is an example of what has come to be known as the revisionist position, which stands opposed to the majority orthodox position. Like other revisionists, Moyar attempts to show that the war was not "wrongheaded and unjust." Instead, it was "a noble but improperly executed enterprise" (xi). His over-the-top, demonizing characterizations of certain leaders in his story come across as tendentious. The great value of this book is that it forcefully advances a contested interpretation of the Vietnam War.

Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York: Vintage, 1989.

As the subtitle suggests, this is something like two books in one. But far from presenting a biography of Army Lieutenant Colonel Vann spliced together with a history of the Vietnam War, Sheehan's work is something far more subtle and creative: a complex narrative that features a huge cast of characters and that assumes the microcosm of Vann's hopeful but tragic life is a revealing lens through which to see the macrocosm of America in Vietnam. An incredible achievement written by a journalist who was there, A Bright Shining Lie won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Race and Politics in Twentieth Century America

Gerstle, Gary. American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

This book explores the most important twentieth-century ideas about what it meant, and means, to be an American. Gary Gerstle sets out to provide a schema, a framework by which readers can understand and make sense of U.S. political, military, and social history during the 1900s.

Gerstle's thesis centers on a competition between what he calls civic nationalism versus racial nationalism. He uses the first phrase to refer to what has been called "the American Creed." That is to say, civic nationalism means American civic principles and rights. It is characterized by its disregard for racial and ethnic distinctions. Consider, for example, the very-American sounding statement, "Here in the U.S., it doesn't matter where you're from or what color you are, if obey the law and are willing to work hard, you'll eventually get ahead." That's an expression of what Gerstle is calling civic nationalism. By contrast, racial nationalism asserts that only people of a certain race and ethnic origin are qualified to lead in America and to enjoy all of the privileges granted by the U.S.

"In this book," says Gerstle, "I argue that the pursuit of these two powerful and contradictory ideals--the civic and the racial--has decisively shaped the history of the American nation in the twentieth century" (p. 5). But this is no liberal-versus-conservative telling of the story. The author says that his is "particularly interested in how liberals and their supporters wrestled with the contradictions between the two nationalist traditions" (6).

In short, Gerstle asserts and sets out to demonstrate that his deceptively simple model--civic nationalism versus racial nationalism--represents a powerful lens through which to look back on the history of the U.S. during the entire twentieth century.

The author acknowledges his dependence on Benedict Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, which, says Gerstle, explains that nations are "sociopolitical creations" and as such are "historically contingent." He also acknowledges the inspiration and direction that came to him through works by W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880; Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom; David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness; Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom; and Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (11-13).

In his "Introduction," Gerstle lays out both his thesis and his interpretation of America during the 1900s. He says that many, perhaps even most American liberals of the early twentieth century believed in "the superiority of a racialized melting pot." But they typically "did not think to include blacks, Hispanics, or Asians in their American crucible" (6). In fact, at that time many Americans with ancestral roots in northeastern Europe believed that even people from eastern and southern Europe would likely never become full-fledged Americans. On the other hand was what liberal Herbert Croly called "the promise of American life," a vision that President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a racist of sorts, placed at the center of his progressivist vision (7).

Gerstle notes that the competition between these two visions of nationhood heated up during times of war. Later, the "Rooseveltian" nation fell apart during the 1960s as a result of the Civil Rights revolution (9). By 1970, "neither the civic nor racial traditions of American nationalism retained enough integrity to serve as rallying points for those who wished to put the nation back together" (10).

In his "Epilogue," which considers the last 25 years of the twentieth century, Gerstle looks back over the wreckage left from the 1960s and early 70s. He says that from 1975 to 2000, Americans identified two new possible and, again, competing directions for the nation: a commitment to multiculturalism versus a renewal of traditional pride in a unified America. He suggests that the presidency of Bill Clinton represented a third option, which drew, in certain ways, on both of those ideas.

I have to confess that as I read American Crucible, I kept waiting for the author to overplay his hand, or for his interpretive framework to break down. From my vantage point, neither of those happened in this book. So I consider Gerstle's thesis a good way of thinking about the history of politics and race in the U.S. during the twentieth century. And, as the great-grandson of people who immigrated to the U.S. from southern Italy in 1897, for me the insights of this book sometimes hit fairly close to home.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Oriard, Michael. Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Hard to believe, it's but true. In years gone by, playing professional football was a job men did, not for as long as they could, but for as long as they had to. There were lots of better-paying jobs. But some men just couldn't get them. So they had to play football instead. Over the last fifty years, the Super Bowl has gone from being a televised championship game to being the centerpiece of an unofficial national holiday in the United States, a day on which Americans eat more than on any other day besides Thanksgiving. In Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport, scholar Michael Oriard tells about the people who were a part of that remarkable transition: the players, coaches, commissioners, and team owners of the National Football League.

Oriard reveals, among other things, that professional football's great triumph in recent times was not inevitable. There were a number of unpredictable factors that combined to make the NFL what it is today. Most of all, he describes and attempts to wrap his mind around the incredible profitability of the NFL. He seems most interested in the sums of money that, as he puts it, "overwhelm comprehension," and the ways all those billions of dollars have changed the game (5).

Given his topic it comes as no surprise that Oriard's sources include major newspapers published in cities with an NFL franchise, the New York Times and the San Francisco Examiner, for example. He also cites magazines like Sports Illustrated and Esquire. But because he is interested in how mountains of money have impacted professional football, Oriard also consults periodicals like Forbes, Financial World, and Street & Smith's Sports-Business Journal. In addition to these sources, he sometimes cites his own personal experience as a standout college football player who went on to play a few seasons in the NFL, and who has followed the on- and off-field drama of the game ever since he hung up his cleats. 

For me, Oriard's observations based on his personal experience were some of the most interesting parts of the book. For example, he describes the early 1970s, when the Super Bowl "was still just a championship game with a huge television audience" but was far from what it has since become. To that, he adds this footnote: "As a Chief, I was entitled to buy two tickets to the game but did it only once, when a former teammate from Notre Dame called to ask if I could get him seats. The idea that I should buy my allotment every year, because they would be worth a fortune to someone somewhere, never crossed my mind" (55). Could anyone do a better job of illustrating the difference between then and now?

Oriard does more than report a mountain of information about the modern NFL. He uses his facts in order to piece together big puzzles that render some impressive portraits, maps of the past that are certainly interesting, and maybe even instructive. For example, the author relates the stories of the labor tension and players' strikes of the 1970s and 80s. He describes them in a way that underscores how these events were all part of the same great struggle, one that lasted from 1974 to 1993. He also paints portraits of two great NFL commissioners, Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue. Oriard suggests that although significantly different from one another, each one was the right man at the right time, and that the lengthy tenures of Rozelle and Tagliabue marked distinct periods of solid growth for professional football.

Highlights in this book for me include a section that tells the unlikely story of the origins and rise of NFL Films. Father and son Ed and Steve Sabol both loved football and movies. Combining their efforts and starting with next to nothing, they made some of the best football films ever produced. Oriard reveals that Steve understood both art and film-making, and that he incorporated his knowledge into the careful crafting of NFL Films. The point here is that these films, first produced in the 1960s, generated a tremendous amount of publicity for professional football. Many kids who grew up during that era remember the films when they were first aired on television, turning the sport into a national obsession.

I also appreciated how, in Chapter 6, "Football in Black and White," Oriard drives home the point that because the genetic make up of individuals is so very diverse and mixed, the social construct we call "race" is nowhere close to being a pure biological category. More than once he also points out that the supposedly-natural superiority of the black athlete can be a two-edged sword. Why? Because someone who asserts that the black person is more likely to be a physically-superior athlete might also suggest that that same black person is more likely to be intellectually inferior.

Overall, I learned a lot from this book and enjoyed reading it most of the time. There were points where the sheer volume of facts and figures was a bit too much. On the other hand, no one can accuse Oriard of playing loose with the facts. He likely has as good a handle on the details of professional football as anyone.

PhD Reading List for Twentieth Century U.S. History

Okay, so here's my working list of titles for Twentieth Century U.S. History. I got my start on this project in a course I took at Texas Tech with Dr. Sean Cunningham, who is part of my committee for qualifying exams. The list has been a work in progress over the last six months or so. About 8 or 9 titles that also appear on my Religion list were deleted from this one because of the overlap. But from here, I don't think there will be many changes if any.

If I've posted something here at Frankly Speaking on one of these, I've added a link to that title. Sometimes at the end of an entry, I've included a few tags that identify some of the topics of that book.

I've tried to categorize the list, a project I thought might help me get an overall sense of what's here. So far, I've read or a least gotten into about 75% of these titles. Not knowing very much about the other 25% of the books made them harder to categorize. So I might be moving some of them around later. Trying to gain a good bit of mastery over this material should keep me busy for a while.

Background, Survey, General (7)

Kennedy, David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Klein, Maury. The Genesis of Industrial America, 1870-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Painter, Nell Irvin. Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987.

Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Patterson, James T. Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Sitkoff, Harvard, editor. Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Wiebe, Robert. The Search for Order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill and Wang, 1966.

Cold War, esp. Cuban Missile Crisis (7)

Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Imagery of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Politics. Society.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2005. Cold War.

Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Introductions by Robert S. McNamara and Harold Macmillan. New York: Norton, 1969. Cold War. Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK Administration. Politics.

Leffler, Melvyn P. The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917-1953. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.

May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988. Cold War. Gender.

McNamara, Robert S. "The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons: Perceptions and Misperceptions," Foreign Affairs 62 (Fall 1983): 59-80. Cold War. Nuclear Weapons. Military Tactics.

Stern, Sheldon M. The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Cold War. Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK Administration.

Culture and Mass Media (9)

Bailey, Beth L. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Berkowitz, Edward D. Mass Appeal: The Formative Age of the Movies, Radio, and TV. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Mass Media.

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Atheneum, 1987. Culture. Mass Media.

Culver, Lawrence. The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. New York: Verso, 1996.

Fraterrigo, Elizabeth. Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Pells, Richard. Modernist America: Art, Music, Movies, and the Globalization of American Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Culture.

Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Culture. Media. Movies.

Zeitz, Joshua. Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006. Culture. Society. Women.

Politics (13)

Badger, Anthony J. The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-40. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989. New Deal. Great Depression. FDR Administration.

Brands, H. W. The Strange Death of American Liberalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Politics. Liberalism. Vietnam War.

Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. 2nd edition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Goldberg, Robert Alan. Barry Goldwater. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Conservatism.

Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. Rev. ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Postel, Charles. The Populist Vision. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Rodgers, Daniel T., “In Search of Progressivism.” Reviews in American History 10, no. 4 (1982): 113-132.

Rossinow, Doug. The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Rymph, Catherine E. Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism From Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Republican Party. Women.

Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998. Cold War. Senator Joseph P. McCarthy. Political Repression.

Self, Robert O. All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012.

Wills, Garry. John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Rhetoric. Imagery. Mythology.

Presidents (9)

Brands, H. W. Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Class and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Politics. FDR. Great Depression.

Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. LBJ. Politics. Texas.

Dallek, Robert. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. Boston: Little, Brown, 2003. JFK. Politics.

Gillon, Steven M. The Kennedy Assassination--24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson's Pivotal First Day as President. New York: Basic Books, 2009. 

Greenberg, David. Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image. New York: Norton, 2003. Memory. Richard M. Nixon. Politics. Media.

Link, Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954.

McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Harry S. Truman.

Pietrusza, David. 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies. New York: Union Square, 2008.

Rauchway, Eric. Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.

Wills, Garry. The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981. Politics. Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Family. JFK.

Race and Civil Rights (10)

Boyle, Kevin. Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. New York: Henry Holt, 2004. Race. U.S. Cities--Detroit. Law. 1920s.

Borstelmann, Thomas. The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Civil Rights. Martin Luther King, Jr. Religion--Black Church.

Brilliant, Mark. The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Race. Civil Rights. California. Politics.

Hobbs, Allyson. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Race. Society.

Gerstle, Gary. American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Race. Theodore Roosevelt Administration.

Gordon, Linda. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Lambert, Valerie. Choctaw Nation: A Story of American Indian Resurgence. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. American Indians. Oklahoma. Politics.

McLaurin, Melton. Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South. 2nd ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Race. American South.

Roediger, David. Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 2007.

Sports (5)

Byrne, Julie. O God of Players: The Story of the Immaculata Mighty Macs. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Sports. Gender. Religion--Roman Catholicism.

Oriard, Michael. Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Sports. Professional Football. Society. Race.

Pope, S. W. "Sport History: Into the 21st Century." Journal of Sport History 25 (Summer 1998): i-x.

Sammons, Jeffrey T. "'Race' and Sport: A Critical, Historical Examination." Journal of Sport History 21 (Fall 1994): 203-78. Sports. Race.

Vecsey, George. Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game. New York: Modern Library, 2008. Sports--Baseball.

U.S. South and West, especially Texas (8)

Campbell, Randolph B. Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Texas. Politics.

Crisp, James E. Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett’s Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Texas. Archival Research. Textual Criticism.

Cunningham, Sean P. American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great America Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Dust Bowl. Social History.

Foley, Neil. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Phillips, Michael. White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.

White, Richard. "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Vietnam War (8)

Berman, Larry. Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent. HarperCollins/Smithsonian, 2007. Vietnam War. Espionage. News Media.

Bilton, Michael and Kevin Sim. Four Hours in My Lai. New York: Viking, 1992. Vietnam War. Military. Law.

Hammond, William M. Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998. Vietnam War. News Media. Society.

Milam, Ron. Not a Gentleman's War: An Inside View of Junior Officers in the Vietnam War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Vietnam War. Military.

Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Vietnam War--Revisionist Interpretation. Politics.

O'Brien, Tim. If I Die in a Combat Zone. 1975. Reprint edition. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Vietnam War--Memoir/Novel.

Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York: Vintage, 1989. Vietnam War. Military. News Media.

Vuic, Kara Dixon. Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Women. Gender. Vietnam War.

World Wars I and II, Holocaust (5)

Adler, Selig. "The United States and the Holocaust." American Jewish Historical Quarterly 64 (September 1974): 14-23. Holocaust. World War II. Religion--Judaism.

Dower, John W. War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon, 1986. World War II. Pacific Theater. Japan. Race.

Miscamble, Wilson D. The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. World War II. Pacific Theater. Truman Administration.

Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945. New York: Pantheon, 1984.

Zieger, Robert. America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

1960s (3)

Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Flamm, Michael W. Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Isserman, Maurice and Michael Kazin. America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Stories from the Real Mayberry

McLaurin, Melton. Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South. 2nd edition. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998.

This memoir recounts what life was like for a white kid growing up during the 1950s in Wade, North Carolina, a racially-mixed small town. Melton McLaurin, the son of a respected family in the community, learned his lessons about racism and segregation like anyone else would--through day-to-day norms and specific incidents when boundaries were reinforced and tested. The historical value of the book centers on McLaurin's claim that things were essentially the same in most every other small town in the South during that time. He prefers to reveal the world he grew up in through some unforgettable characters and the stories he remembers about them. His chapters have titles like "Betty Jo" and "Sam."

When he wrote this book, McLaurin was a professor and chair of the department of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. So it's no surprise that he often wants to provide a bit of historical context for the stories he relates. But he never overdoes it, never turns his memoir into something like a history lecture.

From beginning to end, the book remains his story of struggling to make sense of what was happening in the cloudy world of his adolescence in the pre-Civil Rights South. He neither accuses nor absolves members of his own family. Instead, he describes them and everyone else in his hometown as people of their time. Fewer and fewer Americans today have a personal past that reaches back as far as the 1950s. It was a separate past, one we should remember and learn from.

Wilson Miscamble on The Most Controversial Decision, Full Summary of the Book

Miscamble, Wilson D. The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

"Introduction"

According to Miscamble, this book "examines why the bombs were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki." It "goes on to investigate the role they played in Japan's surrender." The author is convinced that history always includes a moral dimension. So, especially in a book on this subject, he feels compelled to explore "whether it was right for the United States to use this weapon against Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (3).

He also writes: " . . . my effort here takes account of the available and extensive documentary evidence on this much debated issue, and it draws on the best scholarship on the subject" (4).

Chapter 1, "Franklin Roosevelt, the Manhattan Project, and the Development of the Atomic Bomb"

The title of this chapters says it all. Miscamble briefly describes the end of the FDR administration and the planning and practical advance towards the development of an atomic weapon to use against the enemies of the Allies. The chapter includes vignettes of, for example, the collaboration between Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, an unlikely partnership. In retrospect, it is a bit surprisingly to realize that the success of the Manhattan Project was not a sure thing, and that at least some of FDR's advisers considered it a waste. Those who reported on the project, however, seemed confident. The bomb could make a huge contribution toward achieving the goal of "complete victory at the lowest cost in American lives."

Chapter 2, "Harry Truman, Henry Stimson, and Atomic Briefings"

The chapter begins with the death of FDR in April 1945, and with Harry S. Truman's succession to the presidency. Miscamble reveals how that FDR had operated on the premise that knowledge is power. He had not often met with Vice-President Truman, who came into the Oval Office poorly informed about any number of significant matters, including the Manhattan Project. To make things even more difficult, Truman's success going forward depended on the likes of Henry L. Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War, a seasoned official with an Ivy League education. Miscamble notes that men like Stimson, who Truman inherited from the previous administration, had never thought very highly of "the senator from Pendergast." But Truman worked effectively enough during those critical first days in office, depending heavily on the best teams he could assemble. Miscamble notes that, contrary to his image of autocracy and quick decisions, Truman actually worked methodically and deliberately, relying on advisers. Also, Miscamble takes the side of those historians who do not believe that Truman strongly considered the development of atomic weapons with an eye toward their implications for future diplomacy. Truman focused simply on winning the war.

Chapter 3, "James F. Byrnes, the Atomic Bomb, and the Pacific War"

Although often overlooked in the 21st century, the contribution of Byrnes (Secretary of State, 1945-47) should not be ignored. "There was but one major issue from Truman's swearing-in until the eve of Potsdam on which Byrnes exercised real impact on policy. His membership on the Interim Committee allowed him to influence American policy on the use of the atomic bomb" (41). Meanwhile, the incredible, ferocious war in the Pacific was dragging on. Iwo Jima and Okinawa were absolutely brutal fights. The politicians and military leaders could only imagine what an invasion of Japan itself would be like. As late as June 18, 1945, U.S. officials were planning for such an invasion, knowing that casualties would run into the hundreds of thousands. Essentially, Truman relied on and deferred to Byrnes on questions related to the atomic weapon. Regarding the development and use of the bomb, Byrnes argued for no sharing of atomic secrets with U.S. allies, and no warning to Japan before use of the bomb.

Chapter 4, "The Potsdam Conference, the Trinity Test, and Atomic Diplomacy"

This chapter reports an incredibly interesting time in history, July 1945. The test at Alamogordo succeeded, and the negotiations at Potsdam were, in the words of both Truman and Byrnes, "the success that failed." Much of the deliberations were held among the advisers, not among the Big Three themselves. Failure was the result of Stalin's deceit, his intention to take as much territory in Europe as he could, and his lack of any real commitment to the agreements. After those meetings in Germany, Truman and Byrnes were eager to go home and, above all, to find out the specifics of what the bomb promised in terms of ending the war.

Chapter 5, "Hiroshima, the Japanese, and the Soviets"

In contrast to the backward look, Miscamble insists that the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was not a controversial decision for President Truman. Moreover, that action was perfectly consistent with the policies of FDR, who would have done the same thing. The assessments of what could happen in the event of a U.S. invasion of Japan were grim. There would be tens of thousands of American casualties, if not more. Miscamble denies the early and oft-repeated story that Japan was on the brink of surrender in late July 1945. This chapter gives some of the details of the preparations at Tinian Island in the Pacific, and about Paul Tibbets and "Deak" Parsons, and the naming of the Enola Gay after Tibbets' mother.

Chapter 6, "The Japanese Surrender"

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were combined with the announcement that the Soviets were declaring war on Japan. Emperor Hirohito decided to end the sufferings of his people and agree to the terms of surrender. Yet even then, there were holdouts in the Japanese military who wanted to fight on. A third atomic bomb would be ready before the end of August, with Tokyo as its intended target. The U.S., strangely, was not well-prepared for Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam proposal for surrender (with the Japanese caveat that the imperial system of government remain intact).  Miscamble points out, again, that in this case, the haggling among officials within the Japanese government over the terms indicates that Japan was not already on the verge of surrender. Miscamble reports the audacity of the Soviets who wanted to jointly rule in Japan with the U.S., and the Soviet attempts to conquer Japanese islands as the war was ending.

Chapter 7, "Necessary, But Was It Right?"

Miscamble seeks to place Hiroshima and Nagasaki in context. First, the immediate destruction of the bombs, and the total number of deaths that came as a result of radiation poisoning, are a comparatively small number during WW II. Second, the number of people who were not killed because the war came to an end is comparatively high. Third, to focus on the barbarity of August 1945 while ignoring Pearl Harbor Day and the hundreds of thousands the Japanese killed in Asia every month is hardly fair.  Nor is it fair to implicate Truman alone while ignoring Churchill and FDR. Both of them were, of necessity it seems, proponents of total war. Nor is it right to suggest that Truman ever turned his back on "some feasible moral course of action that would have secured a Japanese surrender" (124).

Chapter 8, "Byrnes, the Soviets, and the American Atomic Monopoly"

Strange! Truman enunciated a policy of keeping atomic secrets from a dangerous world. Yet even before the Japanese had surrendered, H. D. Smyth's official history of the Manhattan Project was published. Something else that's strange: After WW II, the Truman administration did not emphasize America's exclusive control of atomic weaponry in its foreign diplomacy. One might say that the U.S. didn't have to. Its power was obvious. But nothing suggests that U.S. officials were deliberately exploiting their power. At a conference in London, Byrnes got little cooperation from Molotov who was representing Stalin. As usual, Truman, now focused more on domestic issues, gave Byrnes a diplomatic blank check. Miscamble's account not only denies that the Truman Administration was involved in "atomic diplomacy," it insinuates that the major players hardly knew how that might be done.

Chapter 9, "The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War"

Miscamble emphasizes that, after the end of World War II, the Truman administration did not have a coherent view of how the U.S. might go forward with its newfound atomic capability. He denies that Truman was actively conducting nuclear diplomacy. Miscamble says that the Cold War that unfolded was not inevitable, but that it escalated mainly because of Joseph Stalin's paranoid power grabs.

"Ironically, Stalin might have been able to pursue his chosen approach of sovietization of a vast territory without much objection from the United States, if he had been able to limit his external goals to an East European sphere of influence. If he had learned a lesson from the Iran episode in March 1946 and sat back contentedly to enjoy an empire that reached beyond the accomplishment of any of his Czarist forebears, then the Cold War might have been averted. But he could not. Stalin overreached and moved far beyond cementing his control of Eastern Europe so as to threaten both in the Mediterranean, particularly in Turkey, and also in Western Europe. In this disastrous choice lies the immediate origins of the Cold War" (146-47).

Regarding Japan and the bombs, Miscamble concludes as follows: "First, the principal motive for utilizing the new weapon lay in a potent mix of desire to force Japan's surrender and save American lives. Second, the atomic bombs contributed decisively in forcing that eventual surrender and in bringing the brutal war to an end prior to any costly invasion of the Japanese home islands." Third, "while the atomic bomb was never entirely separated from considerations of postwar international politics, the decision to use the weapon was not driven by these concerns" (151).

A major theme here is that one of the most remarkable aspects of this story is how uncontroversial atomic weapons were before the end of World War II.  Both FDR and Truman, along with virtually everyone in their administrations, assumed that if ever the silver bullet of an atomic weapon came into American hands, the U.S. was going to use it to end the war.

D. J. Boorstin on Pseudo-Events and Celebrities

Here's a brief take on a book that's worth a read, I think: Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Atheneum, 1987.

First published in 1962, The Image went on to established itself as a standard work of history and cultural critique. Boorstin took note of the development of what he called "pseudo-events." He meant by this term events created for the sake of being reported; "man-made" rather than "God-made" events; a scheduled interview, subsequently analyzed, versus a train wreck, for example. The personal counterpart to a pseudo-event, said Boorstin, was a celebrity, "the human pseudo-event." In short, over 50 years ago this guy anticipated developments like 24-hour "news," staged "reality" TV, and the fame of people like Paris Hilton. He offers no prescription for a world where images do not depict reality but rather create it. He seems to assume that the best remedy is awareness. Interesting.

All's Fair in War? Larry Berman's Wonderful Book about Pham Xuan An

Berman, Larry. Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent. New York: HarperCollins/Smithsonian, 2007.

This finely-written book tells the story of one of the most fascinating real-life characters ever. If you like history with a bit of mystery, you'll love this.

*Spoiler Alert*

In early 1953 in the southernmost province of Vietnam, the legendary Le Duc Tho presided over a ceremony in which Pham Xuan An, the subject of this riveting story, became a member of the Communist Party. Shortly afterward, the Party determined An's career. They realized he had the intellect and disposition to become a first-rate spy. For many years to come, An would lead a brilliant double life.

As historian and author Larry Berman explains, in the early 1950s, the leaders of the Communist Party fully realized that the United States was in the process of replacing the French colonialists in Vietnam. To the U.S.--in spite of American propaganda--Vietnam was never about the Vietnamese people. It was always about Cold War containment and the incredible task of keeping all of the dominoes in Southeast Asia standing straight.

For their part, many of the Vietnamese people had no interest in being told by the French or the Americans or anyone else that they would not be allowed to determine their own national future. As they had with the French, the Vietnamese would do everything they could to resist the Americans. Secretly, Pham Xuan An and his network would become a powerful component of that resistance.

In 1957, An came to Orange Coast College in California where he learned English, became acquainted with American culture, and developed many contacts inside the U.S. He even worked for the college newspaper where he made several new friends. Upon returning to Vietnam, An was at first quite nervous. Living in Saigon, he wondered, would he be suspected and arrested? Once he settled down, An began to develop relationships with important Americans and high-ranking leaders within the South Vietnamese government. In the years to come, An worked for the Reuters news service, the New York Herald Tribune, and eventually for Time magazine. All along, he was one of Hanoi's most valuable informants. He didn't have to steal information. It was freely discussed and shared with him by people who considered An a colleague and friend.

In short, Pham Xuan An may have been the one of the greatest con men and informants ever. For many years, he lived as both a first-rate journalist in Saigon working for American news outlets, and also as a hero of the Communist government headquartered in Hanoi.

The Kennedy Imprisonment, by Garry Wills

Wills, Garry. The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1982).

Wills, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, wrote this book in the wake of Senator Ted Kennedy’s unsuccessful run in 1980 for the Democratic presidential nomination. Like a political observer trained in family psychology, the author attempts to explain the unique privileges, burdens--and now failures-- of the youngest Kennedy son.

He describes it all as the result of the family’s development and abuse of power over many decades. For example, in “Part One: Sex,” Wills tells a number of stories about the philandering father, Joe Kennedy Sr. He suggests that John Kennedy, also a compulsive womanizer, was both acting like his father and trying to compensate for his own weak constitution. Only years later would the moral weight of this “masculine” family habit fall squarely on Ted’s shoulders. His lonely and damaged wife, Joan, and the candidate’s obvious reluctance to come close to any woman in public were just two of the pitiful consequences of a pattern of immorality spanning two generations.

In subsequent parts, Wills likewise depicts Ted as the prisoner of “Family” and “Image,” and “Charisma.” To devastating effect, he describes a Joe Kennedy Sr. obsessed with the goal of portraying his children, especially his sons, as a group of indomitable winners. For example, working behind the scenes Joe began with John’s senior paper at Harvard and managed to have it padded, reworked, and promoted as a noteworthy book, Why England Slept. He also saw to it that the story of PT 109 was carefully crafted and publicized so that John emerged as one of the best-known heroes of World War II. Again, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Years later it was not John Kennedy, but Ted Sorensen assisted by Jules Davids, who wrote almost all of Profiles in Courage, a book that, incredibly, garnered for JFK a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, the decades-long tradition of deception and empty credentials would inevitably come crashing down. But again, in this tragedy of Shakespearean proportions the older Kennedys experienced the pride. It was Ted, in so many ways alone, who would know the fall.

In the last major section of the book, “Power,” Wills sets out to demolish, among other things, the American myth of the Cuban missile crisis. One by one, he takes out each pillar holding up the structure: Notwithstanding the attempts to spread the blame, only President Kennedy could have launched or prevented the Bay of Pigs. With a mixture of hubris and ignorance, he opted to go with the plan, in part because it was clandestine, unconventional, and high brow, “a James Bond exploit blessed by Yale, a PT raid run by Ph.D.s” (231). And why not risk it? The president had been so lucky up till then.

The early, conventional portraits of the Kennedy administration suggest that not only did JFK learn several important lessons from his humiliating defeat, it was this newfound wisdom that supposedly enabled him to act so effectively during the missile crisis. But Wills insists that the facts speak otherwise. He says that after the Bay of Pigs, the president never questioned the general purpose and plan of the scheme. To the contrary, he increased his dedication to an anti-bureaucratic approach that specialized in things like paramilitary assaults, counterinsurgency, and guerrilla warfare. In other words, after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy did not change his course. Instead, he became more devoted to the prospect of unseating Fidel Castro, this time by means of the secretive Operation Mongoose. Plans designed to topple the Cuban dictator were well known by both Castro and Khrushchev. Thus, the reason why Castro reluctantly agreed to have Soviet missiles sent to Cuba was because he wanted a deterrent against an invasion by the US. When Cuba and the USSR made this claim during the crisis, they were telling the truth.

And what of the legendary restraint shown by Kennedy during the crisis? Wills answers that the president’s claim that he made “every effort” in order to provide room for his adversary is “demonstrably untrue” (265). Among other things, Kennedy ruled out open diplomacy from the very beginning of the crisis, insisted that the removal of the Jupiter missiles from Turkey must not be seen as a quid pro quo, and eventually gave the Russians a 24-hour deadline along with his proposal, a move that actually increased the likelihood of war.

Wills says that by acting in such unrestrained fashion, Kennedy helped to precipitate the fall of Khrushchev, a relatively-easy opponent who was replaced by a Soviet hard-liner. Having been treated this way once by the US, leaders in the USSR were in no mood to make compromises later. Not only that, Kennedy’s behavior in the crisis established a pattern of insisting that the US always deal with adversaries from a superior position, instead of as equals. For these reasons, Wills concludes that the Cuban missile crisis was not, in fact, a great victory for Kennedy and America.

The Kennedy Imprisonment was intended for a general, non-academic audience. It is extremely well written and reads easily. Nevertheless, any book making so many counter claims, several of them audacious, really should be accompanied by documentation. There was no good reason for this work to be published without some sort of notes. Their absence significantly weakens the credibility and usefulness of what might have been a convincing, as well as telling, critique.

The Week the World Stood Still

Stern, Sheldon M. The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.


From 1977 to 1999, Sheldon M. Stern served as Historian of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. In 2003, Stern published Averting ‘The Final Failure’: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). The author describes that book as a “full-length” account based primarily on tape recordings of meetings that were held in the Cabinet Room and Oval Office of the White House during the crisis. Two years later, in 2005, Stern published The Week the World Stood Still, the book under review. In his “Acknowledgments,” he explains that this later work is a “revised and condensed version of Averting ‘The Final Failure’,” designed especially for “students and general readers.”

In Chapter One, “The JFK Cuban Missile Crisis Tapes,” Stern describes both the delight and the frustration of listening to the recordings of the meetings. He relates the tedium of using the tapes, often incomplete and sometimes poor in quality, in order to identify who was speaking and what each person said. He also tells some of the story behind the production of the tapes: of JFK’s request for a recording system in the White House, the system itself and how it worked, etc. Finally, he disputes the notion that because only President Kennedy and his brother Robert knew that they were being recorded, the tapes fail to capture honest dialogue, but instead record the Kennedys posturing for posterity. In defense of his assertion, the author notes that a freewheeling conversation among fifteen bright people would be impossible to manipulate. Besides, like Richard M. Nixon a decade later, President Kennedy never imagined that anyone else would ever have access to his tapes. Above all, Stern reminds the reader that at the time of the crisis, as the meetings were being recorded, no one knew for sure how it would all turn out.

In Chapter Two, “The Making of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” the author sets the stage with a short, well-written, and helpful overview of the historical realities leading up to the crisis. Stern describes the Cold War and U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and with Cuba. He also tells us, with remarkable insight, about John F. Kennedy. Stern quotes letters written by JFK when he was a junior naval officer serving in the Pacific during World War II. Here, the reader gets to listen in as the unsuspecting future President candidly talks about the unspeakable ugliness of war and the comic ineptness of at least some military leaders. Stern closes the chapter with something that I found especially helpful: a brief, professional biography of each of the “Key Members of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.”

Chapter Three, “The Secret Meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council,” makes up more than three-quarters of the book. Here Stern recounts the significant events and meetings of each day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, beginning with Tuesday, October 16, 1962, and continuing through Monday, October 29. Throughout, the author weaves together description and direct quotation in order to produce a continuous narrative. Without hearing the tapes themselves, the reader gains a strong sense of how the meetings went, the personalities involved, the attitudes of the participants, who spoke most frequently, and the specific decisions that President Kennedy had to make while under incredible pressure.

Stern’s account provides plenty of high drama. A good example comes from JFK’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday morning, October19. A few days into the crisis by this point, the deliberations of the Executive Committee had convinced the president of the terrible hazards and possibly-tragic consequences of a full-scale attack and invasion of Cuba. Kennedy favored something less drastic, a naval blockade of Cuba. But the JCS stoutly opposed him:

General LeMay, giving no indication that he had understood the dangers raised by the president, turned JFK’s Berlin argument on its head: “I don’t share your view that if we knock off Cuba they’re gonna knock off Berlin.” The Soviets “are gonna push on Berlin and push real hard” if the U.S. fails to take military action against Cuba, since they would feel “they’ve got us on the run.” Kennedy interrupted to ask about Soviet reprisals after a U.S. attack on Cuba. There would be no reprisals, LeMay asserted confidently, as long as you tell Khrushchev again, “If they make a move [in Berlin], we’re gonna fight.” The self-assured general moved in for the verbal kill: “This blockade and political action I see leading into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appeasement in Munich. . . . I just don’t see any other solution except direct military intervention, right now” (pp. 67-68).
Passages like that one typify Stern’s account. From beginning to end, the reader is able to perceive the emotional ebb and flow of the meetings, as well as the political, military, and diplomatic questions that the president had to answer. The chapter ends not long after Nikita Khrushchev made his surprise announcement, on Saturday, October 27, that the Soviets would dismantle and remove their offensive weapons from Cuba.

“Epilogue: The November Post-Crisis” describes the tentative character of the agreement that the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. had reached. There were still many loose ends to tie up.

In his “Conclusion,” Stern reflects on the ways in which his experience with the tapes radically changed his perspective on the president and the crisis. Like most everyone else during the late 1960s, Stern says that he took it for granted “that John Kennedy had been a tough and relentless Cold Warrior.” However, in spite of his hard public rhetoric and his desire to see Castro eliminated, during the crisis Kennedy "repeatedly acted to prevent, postpone, or at least question the wisdom of” more than a dozen “potentially provocative measures” (216). In doing so, he “often stood virtually alone against warlike counsel from the ExComm, the JCS, and the leaders of Congress during those historic 13 days” (217). It seems clear that the author continues to esteem John F. Kennedy as a hero. Only now, he has different reasons.

Blogging about Barth

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Karl Barth (1886-1968). In his fine little book, Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, Millard Erikson writes in his entry for "Barth, Karl":

Swiss theologian generally thought of as the founder of neo-orthodoxy. He may well be the most influential Protestant theologian of the twentieth century.

At this point, I'm planning to write a few things about him--his life and work and legacy. Maybe a thing or two will wind up getting published next year.

This post is my way of jump starting the process of my own study at a place where your feedback is possible. Already, I've posted a couple of things where I try to explain a bit about Karl, here and here.

Getting into this is kind of ironic for me. I don't really think of myself as a "Barthian" in any sense, although what Karl has to say usually resonates with me in some way or another.

At other times, I don't think I understand much of what he's talking about. So part of what's motivating me is an interest in getting a better idea of what Barth was saying, and what he was trying to accomplish. Also, if I wind up talking about him in print, it should be informed, right? Besides, I'm curious to go back and revisit the question, What's all the fuss about? Barth has always generated a tremendous response and reaction.

Anyway, what experiences have you had in reading Karl Barth? And what do you think are the most enduring contributions that he made?