Political Biography Books: The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire or 1960 LBJ VS JFK VS Nixon

The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana

Author: Peter Clark

A sweeping, brilliantly vivid history of the sudden end of the British Empire and the moment when America became a world superpower—published on the sixtieth anniversary of Britain’s withdrawal from Palestine.
“I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” Winston Churchill’s famous statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was beginning to turn, pugnaciously affirmed his loyalty to the worldwide institution that he had served for most of his life. Britain fought and sacrificed on a global scale to defeat Hitler and his allies—and won. Yet less than five years after Churchill’s defiant speech, the British Empire effectively ended with Indian independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in May 1948. As the sun set on Britain’s empire, the age of America as world superpower dawned.
How did this rapid change of fortune come about? Peter Clarke’s book is the first to analyze the abrupt transition from Rule Britannia to Pax Americana. His swift-paced narrative makes superb use of letters and diaries to provide vivid portraits of the figures around whom history pivoted: Churchill, Gandhi, Roosevelt, Stalin, Truman, and a host of lesser-known figures through whom Clarke brilliantly shows the human dimension of epochal events.
Clarke traces the intimate and conflicted nature of the “special relationship,” showing how Roosevelt and his successors were determined that Britain must be sustained both during the war and after, but that the British Empire must not; and reveals how the tensionbetween Allied war aims, suppressed while the fighting was going on, became rapidly apparent when it ended. The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire is a captivating work of popular history that shows how the events that followed the war reshaped the world as profoundly as the conflict itself.

Publishers Weekly

Britain's collapse as a great power is chronicled in this lively diplomatic history covering the end of WWII through the British withdrawal from India and Palestine in the late 1940s. Historian Clarke (Hope and Glory: Britain, 1900-2000) tells a fundamentally prosaic story. Britain, its finances, military power and morale exhausted by the war, found itself marginalized by the superpowers and dependent on American aid; when imperial commitments in India and Greece grew unaffordable, according to Clarke, Britain ditched them rather abruptly, along with its central role in world affairs. Drawing on participants' diaries, Clarke offers a fine-grained, well-paced narrative of British statesmen playing their weak hand in one negotiation after another, begging for economic concessions from the hard-nosed Americans, strategic concessions from an indifferent Stalin and political concessions from impatient subjects. At the story's center is Winston Churchill, embodiment of Britain's faltering imperial pretensions. In Clarke's caustic portrait, Churchill is vain, pompous and infantile (showily urinating on Germany's Siegfried line, for example), forever disguising a humiliating decline with grand rhetoric. The opposite of great man historiography, Clarke's sympathetic but sardonic account shows anxious leaders struggling to catch up with a world that has passed them by. 16 pages of b&w photos; maps. (May)

Kirkus Reviews

An account of the British Empire's abrupt decline in influence around the globe following World War II. Clarke (Modern British History/Cambridge Univ.; Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000, 2004, etc.) takes a look at the pivotal events that shaped Great Britain's fortunes following the nationwide jubilation of 1945 and also examines how America evolved into a worldwide superpower. The "thousand days" of the title covers a stretch between 1944 and 1947. The author presents a clear, detailed account of events, casting Winston Churchill as the key figure at the center of Britain's postwar misfortunes. A brief prologue outlines how Britain headed into shaky economic territory during the war, with huge debts accrued in Churchill's valiant effort to emerge victorious from battle. Then, drawing on disclosures from diaries belonging to figures such as Churchill's Assistant Private Secretary, Sir John Colville, and the former prime minister's personal physician, Lord Moran, as well as information drawn from contemporary newspapers, Clarke examines how Anglo-American relations fractured in the postwar era. In particular, he frequently returns to the Lend-Lease agreement, which was set up so the United States could provide the allied nations with various wartime supplies. The complications inherent in such a deal helped trigger the enormous friction between the two countries once the war ended. America was no longer willing to loan vast sums of money unless its allies pulled out of India and Palestine; this, in turn, led to the dissolution of the British Empire. Clarke concludes by recalling the negotiations that led to Britain's loss of India, offering some enlightening details on Gandhi'sinvolvement in the process. There are few revelations here, although the author occasionally fleshes out a familiar story with amusing anecdotes, such as those about Churchill's frequently erratic behavior during important meetings. A fairly perfunctory overview, but sufficiently engaging and well-written. For a more lively, probing social history, see David Kynaston's Austerity Britain: 1945-51 (2008). Agent: Sally Harding/The Cooke Agency

1960-LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

Author: David Pietrusza

It was the election that would ultimately give America “Camelot” and its tragic aftermath, a momentous contest when three giants who each would have a chance to shape the nation battled to win the presidency.
Award-winning author David Pietrusza does here for the 1960 presidential race what he did in his previous book, 1920: the Year of the Six Presidents—which Kirkus Reviews selected as one of their Best Books of 2007. Until now, the most authoritative study of the 1960 election was Theodore White’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the President, 1960. But White, as a trusted insider, didn’t tell all. Here’s the rest of the story, what White could never have known, nor revealed. Finally, it’s all out—including JFK’s poignant comment on why LBJ’s nomination as vice president would be inconsequential: “I’m 43 years old. I’m not going to die in office.”
Combining an engaging narrative with exhaustive research, Pietrusza chronicles the pivotal election of 1960, in which issues of civil rights and religion (Kennedy was only the second major-party Roman Catholic candidate ever) converged. The volatile primary clash between Senate Majority leader LBJ and the young JFK culminated in an improbable fusion ticket. The historic, legendary Kennedy-Nixon debates followed in its wake. The first presidential televised debates, they forever altered American politics when an exhausted Nixon was unkempt and tentative in their first showdown. With 80 million viewers passing judgment, Nixon’s poll numbers dropped as the charismatic Kennedy’s star rose. Nixon learnedhis lesson—resting before subsequent debates, reluctantly wearing makeup, and challenging JFK with a more aggressive stance—but the damage was done.
There’s no one better to convey the drama of that tumultuous year than Pietrusza. He has 1,000 secrets to spill; a fascinating cast of characters to introduce (including a rogue’s gallery of hangers-on and manipulators); and towering historical events to chronicle. And all of it is built on painstaking research and solid historical scholarship. Pietrusza tracks down every lead to create a winning, engaging, and very readable account.
With the 2008 elections approaching, politics will be on everyone’s mind, and 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon will transform the way readers see modern American history.

A sampling of what Theodore White couldn’t chronicle—and David Pietrusza does:

· Richard Nixon’s tempestuous Iowa backseat blowup, and his bizarre Election Day road trip

· The full story of a sympathetic call from JFK to Coretta Scott King

· John Ehrlichman’s spy missions on the Nelson Rockefeller and Democratic camps

· The warnings before Election Day that Chicago’s mayor Daley would try to fix the race’s outcome

· JFK’s amphetamine-fueled debate performance

Karl Helicher - Library Journal

Almost half a century after Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1960, Pietrusza (1920: The Year of the Six Presidents) raises the bar with his winning and provocative chronicle. The political giants who battled for the 1960 presidency-and the closeness of the election-make for exciting narratives. The author writes respectfully of the three hopefuls but is not starstruck by any of them. Here, JFK is portrayed at times as a slacker who would not let politics get in the way of adultery. Richard Nixon was different from Kennedy, much less by his politics than by his lack of charm. Johnson, the indefatigable vote getter, was a champion of the lower class or a crude wheeler-dealer, depending on what the situation called for. Also prominently featured are Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch, and presidential and vice presidential hopefuls Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, and Adlai Stevenson. Pietrusza concludes with a thought worth pondering: Why was the election so close when Nixon did so much wrong (ignoring Martin Luther King Jr., choosing the patrician Henry Cabot Lodge as his running mate, not receiving support from President Eisenhower) while Kennedy did almost everything right (choosing the loyal LBJ as his vice-presidential running mate, winning the primaries, appearing healthy, gaining the black vote while retaining the white South)? The answer: there was something about JFK that the voters of 1960 simply did not like. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

A historian revisits the exciting, close-run 1960 campaign. In what's becoming something of a specialty, Pietrusza (1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, 2007, etc.) turns again to a presidential race that included two men in walk-on roles who would later hold the office, Ford and Reagan, and featured three who would occupy the Oval Office for the next 14 years. Since Theodore White's 1961 classic The Making of the President, 1960, we've learned more about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Milhous Nixon, much of it unflattering, and almost all of it reflected in this colorful, character-driven narrative. Pietrusza examines the candidates' manifold personal shortcomings, flaws either unseen or at least unspoken by White, including JFK's dangerous philandering and even more dangerous health, LBJ's curious blend of bullying cowardice and vanity, and Nixon's deep resentments and insecurities. In a race where the candidates were all children of the New Deal and all confirmed cold warriors, personalities dominated, and the finally mature technology of television brought those personalities into the country's living rooms. Pietrusza is especially strong covering the crucial Kennedy-Nixon TV debates and, while he pauses to consider other incidents upon which the vote may have turned, he remains focused on character. He also looks at the hapless Hubert Humphrey, outspent in the critical West Virginia primary, Nelson Rockefeller, outmaneuvered by Nixon, and Adlai Stevenson and Stuart Symington, both outhustled by Kennedy. Among many others, Pietrusza's cast includes Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Sr., both wary of Kennedy's Catholicism; Dwight Eisenhower, foreverholding Nixon at arms length; Frank Sinatra, virtually pimping for JFK; Sam Giancana and Richard J. Daley, mobster and mayor of Chicago respectively, funneling money and votes to Kennedy; and Joseph P. Kennedy, the mastermind and bank behind his son's bid for the White House. A lively look at the underside of a campaign foreshadowing three successive presidencies that would end in assassination, failure and disgrace. Agent: Carol Mann/Carol Mann Agency

Political Biography Books

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire or 1960 LBJ VS JFK VS Nixon

The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

1960-LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

Karl Helicher - Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

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