Book picks similar to
Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War by John Steinbeck
non-fiction
steinbeck
nonfiction
vietnam-war
Intrepid's Last Case
William Stevenson - 1983
They concluded that the rumors grew, ironically, from Intrepid's last wartime case involving the first major Soviet intelligence defector of the new atomic age: Igor Gouzenko. Intrepid saved Gouzenko and found him sanctuary inside a Canadian spy school. Gouzenko was about to make more devastating disclosures than those concerning atomic espionage when the case was mysteriously terminated and Intrepid's organization dissolved.Unraveling the implications of Gouzenko's defection and Intrepid's removal from the case, tracing the steps of Dick Ellis and disclosing much new information regarding United States and Canadian postwar intelligence activities, Intrepid's Last Case is a story that for sheer excitement rivals the best spy fiction--and is all the more important because every word is true.Filled with never-before-revealed facts on the Soviet/Western nuclear war dance and a compelling portrayal of the mind of a professional spy, Intrepid's Last Case picks up where the first book ended, at the very roots of the cold war. It describes one of the most widespread cover-ups and bizarre betrayals in intelligence history. This is the incredible Intrepid against the KGB.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty, and War
John "Chick" Donohue - 2017
You will laugh and cry, but you will not be sorry that you read this rollicking story.”—Malachy McCourtSoon to be a major motion picture written and directed by Peter Farrelly, who won two Academy Awards for Green Book—a wildly entertaining, feel-good memoir of an Irish-American New Yorker and former U.S. marine who embarked on a courageous, hare-brained scheme to deliver beer to his pals serving Vietnam in the late 1960s.One night in 1967, twenty-six-year-old John Donohue—known as Chick—was out with friends, drinking in a New York City bar. The friends gathered there had lost loved ones in Vietnam. Now, they watched as anti-war protesters turned on the troops themselves.One neighborhood patriot came up with an inspired—some would call it insane—idea. Someone should sneak into Vietnam, track down their buddies there, give them messages of support from back home, and share a few laughs over a can of beer.It would be the Greatest Beer Run Ever.But who’d be crazy enough to do it?One man was up for the challenge—a U. S. Marine Corps veteran turned merchant mariner who wasn’t about to desert his buddies on the front lines when they needed him.Chick volunteered.A day later, he was on a cargo ship headed to Vietnam, armed with Irish luck and a backpack full of alcohol. Landing in Qui Nho’n, Chick set off on an adventure that would change his life forever—an odyssey that took him through a series of hilarious escapades and harrowing close calls, including the Tet Offensive. But none of that mattered if he could bring some cheer to his pals and show them how much the folks back home appreciated them.This is the story of that epic beer run, told in Chick’s own words and those of the men he visited in Vietnam.
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
Rick Perlstein - 2008
Perlstein's account begins with the '65 Watts riots, nine months after Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus. Yet the next year, scores of liberals were tossed from Congress, America was more divided than ever & a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback. Between '65 & '72, America experienced a 2nd civil war. From its ashes, today's political world was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Agnew, Humphrey, McGovern, Daley & Geo Wallace but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Chas Manson, John Lindsay & Jane Fonda. There are glimpses of Jimmy Carter, Geo H.W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry & even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove & Bill Clinton--& an unambitious young man named Geo W. Bush. Cataclysms tell the story: Blacks trashing their neighborhoods. White suburbanites wielding shotguns. Student insurgency over the Vietnam War. The assassinations of Rbt F. Kennedy & Martin Luther King. The riots at the '68 Democratic Nat'l Convention. The fissuring of the Democrats into warring factions manipulated by the dirty tricks of Nixon & his Committee to ReElect the President. Nixon pledging a dawn of nat'l unity, governing more divisively than any president before him, then directing a criminal conspiracy, the Watergate cover-up, from the Oval Office. Then, in 11/72, Nixon, harvesting the bitterness & resentment born of turmoil, was reelected in a landslide, not only setting the stage for his '74 resignation but defining the terms of the ideological divide characterizing America today. Filled with prodigious research, driven by a powerful narrative, Perlstein's account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.
Wrestling With His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. II, 1849-1856
Sidney Blumenthal - 2017
His Whig Party is broken in the 1852 election, and disintegrates. His perennial rival, Stephen Douglas, forges an alliance with the Southern senators and Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. Violent struggle breaks out on the plains of Kansas, a prelude to the Civil War.Lincoln rises to the occasion. Only he can take on Douglas in Illinois, and he finally delivers the dramatic speech that leaves observers stunned. In 1855, he makes a race for the Senate, which he loses when he throws his support to a rival to prevent the election of a proslavery candidate. Now, in Wrestling With His Angel, Sidney Blumenthal explains how Lincoln and his friends operate behind the scenes to destroy the anti-immigrant party in Illinois to clear the way for a new Republican Party. Lincoln takes command and writes its first platform and vaults onto the national stage as the leader of a party that will launch him to the presidency.The Washington Monthly hailed Blumenthal’s Volume I as, “splendid…no one can come away from reading A Self-Made Man without eagerly anticipating the ensuing volumes.” Now, in one of the greatest American success stories, Wrestling With His Angel brings Lincoln from the wilderness to the peak of his career as he takes control of the nation’s most profound spiritual crisis—slavery—and enters the battle for the nation’s soul.
Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower's Secret Campaign against Joseph McCarthy
David A. Nichols - 2017
In spite of a public perception that Eisenhower was unwilling to challenge McCarthy, Ike believed that directly confronting the senator would diminish the presidency. Therefore, the president operated with a “hidden hand,” refusing even to mention the Senator’s name. In Ike and McCarthy, David A Nichols shows how the tension between the two men escalated. In a direct challenge to Eisenhower, McCarthy alleged that the US Army was harboring communists and launched an investigation. But the senator had unwittingly signed his own political death warrant. The White House employed surrogates to conduct a clandestine campaign against McCarthy and was not above using information about the private lives of McCarthy’s aides as ammunition. In January 1954 McCarthy was arguably the most powerful member of the Senate. By the end of that year, he had been censured by his colleagues for unbecoming conduct. Eisenhower’s covert operation had discredited the senator months earlier, exploiting the controversy that resulted from the televised Army-McCarthy hearings. McCarthy would never recover his lost prestige. Nichols uses documents previously unavailable or overlooked to authenticate the extraordinary story of Eisenhower’s anti-McCarthy campaign. Ike and McCarthy is an eye-opening, newsworthy, and fascinating read.
The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts
Scott Anderson - 2020
But it was clear - to some - that the Soviet Union was already executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government's strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA.The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies - Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis, and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia.But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government - and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had a stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the U.S. had begun its disastrous intervention in Vietnam, and America, the beacon of democracy, was overthrowing democratically-elected governments and earning the hatred of much of the world. All of this culminated in an act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the Cold War into place for decades to come.Anderson brings to the telling of this story all the narrative brio, deep research, skeptical eye, and lively prose that made Lawrence in Arabia a major international bestseller. The intertwined lives of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom, but the ravages of the Cold War led them to different fates. Two would quit the CIA in despair, stricken by the moral compromises they had to make; one became the archetype of the duplicitous and destructive American spy; and one would be so heartbroken he would take his own life.The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I Love You My Child, I'm Abandoning You: Holocaust book memoirs
Ariela Palacz - 2017
But one day she is suddenly forced to confront the cruel reality of the Holocaust, together with the rest of French Jewry. Paulette is forced to separate from her family, and as a result, abandoned by her father. But despite her difficult and shocking life experiences, she remains naïve and optimistic, holding on to her thirst for life even in the darkest hours.
An authentic and moving life story
I Love You My Child, I'm Abandoning You is an exciting human documentary, taking place in France during the Holocaust. It honors the memory of the French Jews who perished in the Second World War, while simultaneously giving voice the persistent will to live, and the strength and bravery that characterize those who survived and gave rise to the future generations of the Jewish people.
An existential odyssey that puts a spotlight on the human need and right to belong
Ariela Palacz shares her life story through the character of little Paulette Szenker, sensitively weaving past and present into an authentic and moving journey that shifts between WWII France and contemporary Jerusalem. A story about the human spirit and the thirst for a family, a tradition, and a nation, that will touch your heart.
Get your copy of I Love You My Child, I'm Abandoning You now!
11 Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944
Stanley Weintraub - 2006
He tells how the Russians were rapidly advancing in the east, while the Americans and British, after a brief pause, were primed to thrust into Germany from the west.
Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble
Roger Cohen - 2005
Here, the soldiers were worked to death, starved and brutalized; more than twenty percent died from this horrific treatment.This is one of the last untold stories of World War II, and Roger Cohen re-creates it in all its blistering detail. Ground down by the crumbling Nazi war machine, the men prayed for salvation from the Allied troops, yet even after their liberation, their story was nearly forgotten. There was no aggressive prosecution of the commandants of the camp and the POWs received no particular recognition for their sacrifices. Cohen tells their story at last, in a stirring tale of bravery and depredation that is essential for any reader of World War II history.
Saigon Has Fallen
Peter Arnett - 2015
Arnett’s clear-eyed coverage incurred the wrath of President Lyndon Johnson and officials on all sides of the conflict. Writing candidly and vividly about his gambles and glories, Arnett also shares his fears and fights in reporting against the backdrop of war. Arnett places readers at the historic pivot-points of Vietnam: covering Marine landings, mountaintop battles, Saigon’s decline and fall, and the safe evacuation of a planeload of 57 infants in the midst of chaos. Peter Arnett’s sweeping view and his frank, descriptive, and dramatic writing brings the Vietnam War to life in a uniquely insightful way for this year’s 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Arnett won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for his Vietnam coverage. He later went on to TV-reporting fame covering the Gulf War for CNN. Includes 21 dramatic photographs from the AP Archive and the personal collection of Peter Arnett. About the Author Peter Arnett started as an intern at his local newspaper at age 18, but knew even then his interest was in covering the world. Less than a decade later, he was traveling the globe for The Associated Press, the first of several major American news organizations he would work for. His Vietnam War coverage for the AP won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1966. Arnett joined CNN at its birth in the early 1980s, earning a television Emmy for his live television coverage of the first Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991. Born in New Zealand in 1934, he later became an American citizen and now lives in Fountain Valley, CA. About The Associated Press The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West
Dorothy Wickenden - 2011
Bored by their society luncheons, charity work, and the effete young men who courted them, they learned that two teaching jobs were available in a remote mountaintop schoolhouse and applied;shocking their families and friends. "No young lady in our town," Dorothy later commented, "had ever been hired by anybody." They took the new railroad over the Continental Divide and made their way by spring wagon to the tiny settlement of Elkhead, where they lived with a family of homesteaders. They rode several miles to school each day on horseback, sometimes in blinding blizzards. Their students walked or skied on barrel staves, in tattered clothes and shoes tied together with string. The man who had lured them out west was Ferry Carpenter, a witty, idealistic, and occasionally outrageous young lawyer and cattle rancher. He had promised them the adventure of a lifetime and the most modern schoolhouse in Routt County; he hadn't let on that the teachers would be considered dazzling prospective brides for the locals. That year transformed the children, their families, and the undaunted teachers themselves. Dorothy and Rosamond learned how to handle unruly children who had never heard the Pledge of Allegiance and thought Ferry Carpenter was the president of the United States; they adeptly deflected the amorous advances of hopeful cowboys; and they saw one of their closest friends violently kidnapped by two coal miners. Carpenter's marital scheme turned out to be more successful than even he had hoped and had a surprising twist some forty years later. In their buoyant letters home, the two women captured the voices and stories of the pioneer women, the children, and the other memorable people they got to know. Nearly a hundred years later, New Yorker executive editor Dorothy Wickenden, the granddaughter of Dorothy Woodruff, found the letters and began to reconstruct the women's journey. Enhancing the story with interviews with descendants, research about these vanished communities, and trips to the region, Wickenden creates an exhilarating saga about two intrepid young women and the settling up of the West.
To Try Men's Souls
Newt Gingrich - 2009
Forstchen have turned their sharp eye for detail on the Revolutionary War. Their story follows three men with three very different roles to play in history: General George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Jonathan Van Dorn, a private in Washington’s army.The action focuses on one of the most iconic events in American history: Washington cross - ing the Delaware. Unlike the bold, courageous General in Emanuel Leutze’s painting, Washington is full of doubt on the night of December 25, 1776. After five months of defeat, morale is dangerously low. Each morning muster shows that hundreds have deserted in the night.While Washington prepares his weary troops for the attack on Trenton, Thomas Paine is in Philadelphia, overseeing the printing of his newest pamphlet, The Crisis.And Jonathan Van Dorn is about to bring the war to his own doorstep. In the heat of battle, he must decide between staying loyal to the cause and sparing his brother who has joined up with the British. Through the thoughts and private fears of these three men, Gingrich and Forstchen illu minate the darkest days of the Revolution. With detailed research and an incredible depth of military insight, this novel provides a rare and personal perspective of the men who fought for, and founded the United States of America.
Citizens of London: The Americans who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour
Lynne Olson - 2010
Murrow, the handsome, chain-smoking head of CBS News in Europe; Averell Harriman, the hard-driving millionaire who ran FDR’s Lend-Lease program in London; and John Gilbert Winant, the shy, idealistic U.S. ambassador to Britain. Each man formed close ties with Winston Churchill—so much so that all became romantically involved with members of the prime minister’s family. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Lynne Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and reluctant American public to back the British at a critical time. Deeply human, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, Citizens of London is a new triumph from an author swiftly becoming one of the finest in her field.
It Can't Happen Here
Sinclair Lewis - 1935
Written during the Great Depression when America was largely oblivious to Hitler's aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a President who becomes a dictator to "save the nation." Now finally back in print, It Can't Happen Here remains uniquely important, a shockingly prescient novel that's as fresh and contemporary as today's news.
The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
Max Boot - 2018
It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America’s giant military bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to neverbefore-seen documents―including long-hidden love letters―Boot recasts this cautionary American story, tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish “T. E. Lawrence of Asia” from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the humiliating American evacuation in 1975. Bringing a tragic complexity to this so-called “ugly American,” this “engrossing biography” (Karl Marlantes) rescues Lansdale from historical ignominy and suggests that Vietnam could have been different had we only listened. With reverberations that continue to play out in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken is a biography of profound historical consequence.