Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ

Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ
Author: Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2008-10-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393067254

"As legal counsel and deputy attorney general under Bobby Kennedy and then attorney general and under secretary of state for Lyndon Johnson, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach found himself at the center of the defining issues of the 1960s: the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. In this engaging memoir, he treats readers to a ringside seat for episodes including his confrontation with segregationist governor George C. Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama as well as his successful efforts to steer the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Bill through Congress. The lively, intimate narrative then follows Katzenbach's transition to LBJ's State Department, where he and other members of the administration came to realize the devastating costs of the Vietnam War." "Some of It Was Fun is as much a fresh and candid perspective on a decade that continues to captivate Americans as it is a memoir of one man's eight years in Washington. Yet one of the book's greatest revelations is the voice of a natural storyteller. Winningly self-deprecating and charmingly matter-of-fact, Katzenbach depicts moments of intense drama with compassion, and his assessments of the strengths and shortcomings of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations are measured and discerning. At the heart of this story is the belief shared by Katzenbach and his colleagues that they could truly change the world. Stirring, funny, and, above all, deeply relevant, Some of It Was Fun challenges Americans to once again believe this of themselves."--BOOK JACKET.

Marigold

Marigold
Author: James Hershberg
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 936
Release: 2012-01-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804783888

Marigold presents the first rigorously documented, in-depth story of one of the Vietnam War's last great mysteries: the secret peace initiative, codenamed "Marigold," that sought to end the war in 1966. The initiative failed, the war dragged on for another seven years, and this episode sank into history as an unresolved controversy. Antiwar critics claimed President Johnson had bungled (or, worse, deliberately sabotaged) a breakthrough by bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned secret U.S.-North Vietnamese encounter in Poland. Yet, LBJ and top aides angrily insisted that Poland never had authority to arrange direct talks and Hanoi was not ready to negotiate. This book uses new evidence from long hidden communist sources to show that, in fact, Poland was authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts and that Hanoi had committed to entering talks with Washington. It reveals LBJ's personal role in bombing Hanoi as he utterly disregarded the pleas of both the Polish and his own senior advisors. The historical implications of missing this opportunity are immense: Marigold might have ended the war years earlier, saving thousands of lives, and dramatically changed U.S. political history.

Presidents' Secrets

Presidents' Secrets
Author: Mary Graham
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2017-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 030022768X

A “succinct and well-written” look at how presidents use secrecy to protect the nation, foster diplomacy—and gain power (The Wall Street Journal). Ever since the nation’s most important secret meeting—the Constitutional Convention—presidents have struggled to balance open, accountable government with necessary secrecy in military affairs and negotiations. For the first one hundred and twenty years, a culture of open government persisted, but new threats and technology have long since shattered the old bargains. Today, presidents neither protect vital information nor provide the open debate Americans expect. Mary Graham tracks the rise in governmental secrecy that began with surveillance and loyalty programs during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, explores how it developed during the Cold War, and analyzes efforts to reform the secrecy apparatus and restore oversight in the 1970s. Chronicling the expansion of presidential secrecy in the Bush years, Graham explains what presidents and the American people can learn from earlier crises, why the attempts of Congress to rein in stealth activities don’t work, and why presidents cannot hide actions that affect citizens’ rights and values. “Engrossing . . . chilling and fascinating.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Long Reach of the Sixties

The Long Reach of the Sixties
Author: Laura Kalman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2017-04-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199958238

The Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s was the most liberal in American history. Yet within a few short years, new appointments redirected the Court in a more conservative direction, a trend that continued for decades. However, even after Warren retired and the makeup of the court changed, his Court cast a shadow that extends to our own era. In The Long Reach of the Sixties, Laura Kalman focuses on the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Presidents Johnson and Nixon attempted to dominate the Court and alter its course. Using newly released--and consistently entertaining--recordings of Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's telephone conversations, she roots their efforts to mold the Court in their desire to protect their Presidencies. The fierce ideological battles--between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches--that ensued transformed the meaning of the Warren Court in American memory. Despite the fact that the Court's decisions generally reflected public opinion, the surrounding debate calcified the image of the Warren Court as activist and liberal. Abe Fortas's embarrassing fall and Nixon's campaign against liberal justices helped make the term "activist Warren Court" totemic for liberals and conservatives alike. The fear of a liberal court has changed the appointment process forever, Kalman argues. Drawing from sources in the Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton presidential libraries, as well as the justices' papers, she shows how the desire to avoid another Warren Court has politicized appointments by an order of magnitude. Among other things, presidents now almost never nominate politicians as Supreme Court justices (another response to Warren, who had been the governor of California). Sophisticated, lively, and attuned to the ironies of history, The Long Reach of the Sixties is essential reading for all students of the modern Court and U.S. political history.

True Believer

True Believer
Author: James Traub
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2024-02-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1541619560

A celebrated historian recounts Hubert Humphrey’s role as a liberal hero of twentieth-century America Hubert Humphrey was liberalism’s most dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice. As a young politician in 1948, he defied segregationists and forced the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights. As a senator in 1964, he made good on that commitment by helping pass the Civil Rights Act. But as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, his support for the war in Vietnam made him a target for both Right and Left, and he suffered a shattering loss in the presidential election of 1968. Though Humphrey’s defeat was widely seen as the end of America’s era of liberal optimism, he never gave up. Even after his humiliation on the most public stage, he crafted a new vision of economic justice to counter the yawning political divisions consuming American politics. This biography reveals a deep-dyed idealist willing to compromise and even fight ugly in pursuit of a better society. Elegantly crafted and strikingly relevant to the present, True Believer celebrates Hubert Humphrey’s long struggle for justice for all.

Media Management in the Age of Lyndon B. Johnson

Media Management in the Age of Lyndon B. Johnson
Author: Benjamin W. Quail
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2022-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030849465

This book looks broadly at how the contentious relationships between the media and US President Lyndon B. Johnson affected the national consciousness during the turbulent period of his leadership. Johnson had to deal with a particularly difficult and divisive period in American history and his relationship with the press undoubtedly contributed to an atmosphere of friction within the United States. A more specific purpose of this research monograph is ultimately to shine a light on the trials and tribulations that Johnson faced as a president dealing with new forms of communication in the 1960s. It aims to show the difficulties that he had in adapting a very personal style of leadership – which had served him well in the Senate – in the role he undertook as leader of a nation. Further to this, it builds on this foundation to argue that Johnson developed a reactive, passive stance to dealing with the media, one that ultimately contributed to a loss in popularity and status as leader – a blow he never recovered from during his time in office.

Bending Toward Justice

Bending Toward Justice
Author: Gary May
Publisher:
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2013-04-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465018467

Celebrated historian May describes how activists surmounted long-standing obstacles for the African-American vote, overcoming centuries of bigotry to secure--and preserve--the right of black citizens to full participation in American democracy in a vivid narrative history.

Our Man

Our Man
Author: George Packer
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 030794817X

*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography* *Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography* *Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize* "Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it."--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review "By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself."--David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.

Fight House

Fight House
Author: Tevi Troy
Publisher: Regnery History
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2020-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1621578364

"Fight House looks juicy as all hell" - National Review "Troy seamlessly weaves West Wing gossip with significant moments in modern history." - Jewish Insider THE WHITE HOUSE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A FIGHT HOUSE President Trump’s White House is famously tumultuous. But as presidential historian and former White House staffer Tevi Troy reminds us, bitter rivalries inside the White House are nothing new. From the presidencies of Harry S. Truman, when the modern White House staff took shape, to Donald Trump, the White House has been filled with ambitious people playing for the highest stakes and bearing bitter grudges. In Fight House, you’ll discover: -The advisor to President Harry Truman that General George Marshall refused to acknowledge -How the supposed “Camelot” Kennedy White House was rife with conflict -How Dr. Henry Kissinger displaced other national security advisors to gain President Richard Nixon’s ear -Why President Jimmy Carter’s personal pettiness and obsession with detail led to a dysfunctional White House—and played a role in his losing the 1980 election -How the contrasting management styles of President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan led to some epic White House staff clashes -Why the “No Drama Obama” White House was anything but no drama Insightful, entertaining, and important, Tevi Troy’s Fight House will delight and instruct anyone interested in American politics and presidential history.

Blowtorch

Blowtorch
Author: Frank L Jones
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2013-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612512291

History has not been kind to Robert Komer, a casualty of bad historical analysis and inaccurate information. A Cold War national security policy and strategy adviser to three presidents, Komer was one of the most influential national security professionals of the era. The book begins with a review of his early life that helped shape his worldview. It then examines Komer’s influence as a National Security Council staff member during the Kennedy administration, where he helped set its activist course regarding the Third World. Upon Kennedy’s death, Lyndon Johnson named Komer his “point man” for Vietnam pacification policy, and later General Westmoreland’s operational deputy in Vietnam. The author highlights Komer’s activities during the three years he strove to fulfill the president’s vision that Communism could be repelled from Southeast Asia by economic and social development along with military force. Known as “Blowtorch” for his abrasive personality and disdain for bureaucratic foot dragging, Komer came to be seen as the right person for managing that effort, and in 1968 was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Turkey. The book analyzes Komer’s work during the Carter administration as special adviser to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and credits him for reenergizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s conventional capability and forging the military instrument that implemented the Carter Doctrine in the Persian Gulf—the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. It also explores his final role as a defense intellectual and critic of the Reagan administration’s defense policies. The book concludes with a useful summary of Komer’s impact on American policy and strategy and his contributions to counterinsurgency practices, a legacy now recognized for its importance in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.