Download or read book Memoirs 1950 1963 written by George F. Kennan and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2020-12-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George F. Kennan’s first volume of memoirs is Memoirs 1925-1950. In the second volume of his memoirs, George Kennan resumes the narrative of his remarkable career, re-creating his development as a historian and analyzing the crucial issues of the twentieth century. “I don’t see how a memoir could be better; even if you aren’t interested in the subject at hand, the language carries you along. And the story here told — with all action subject to the finest Kennan introspection — is both important and absorbing... All of it is graced by the Kennan style; all is stamped with the Kennan foreign‐policy trademark [which] consists of an ability to think clearly about complicated matters with an utter independence of mind. He draws on a superb stock of historical knowledge... Most of the conclusions that George Kennan has reached over the years involve, in one way or another, the Soviet Union, and they emerge with admirable clarity from this book... [Kennan is the] most brilliant and civilized of students of the public scene.” — John Kenneth Galbraith, The New York Times “Delightfully written and appallingly frank... Mr. Kennan writes with a freedom and a sensitivity which carry the reader easily into a much deeper understanding of the difficulties of foreign policy-making in a mass democracy of the American model.” — D.C. Watt, New Statesman “[An] engrossing volume... this volume and its predecessor form one of the outstanding memoirs of our time.” — Richard W. Leopold, The American Historical Review “[T]his second volume of his memoirs can be read with as much speed and pleasure as a novel... This book is frank, honest, and introspective, and it therefore reveals a great deal about Kennan as a person... Kennan is obviously a complex, fascinating character — intelligent, proud, articulate, independent-minded, dedicated to serving his country, concerned over the fate of the world, generous in giving of his time to others, and yet suffering the pangs of frustration, loneliness, and alienation from his native land.” — Thomas T. Hammond, The Russian Review “As scholar and diplomatist, policymaker and critic of policy, George F. Kennan possesses a rare combination of expertise and experience... This book is notable for its lucid style and for the verbal portraits which it presents of such persons as Acheson, Dulles, Truman, Eisenhower, Stalin, and Tito... this volume ranks as an important contribution to our understanding of American postwar foreign policy.” — Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “[T]here is much here worth any serious student’s time, indeed close attention... Kennan should and will be read” — Kirkus “Kennan writes so well it is no doubt his intention that, though he shows himself plainly as a public figure, as a private person he remains elusive — a sort of Marquand character: gentlemanly, conservative (in the best sense), urbane, direct and honest; yet to any but his friends very private. I’m glad. There are so few celebrated men who refuse to become celebrities.” — Richard J. Walton, The Washington Post

Download or read book Memoirs 1950 1963 written by George Frost Kennan and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 1983 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American diplomat's reflections of his years of government service provide insight into four decades of U.S. policy

Download or read book Memoirs 1925 1950 written by George Frost Kennan and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Memoirs 1925 1950 written by George F. Kennan and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2020-12-09 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George F. Kennan’s second volume of memoirs is Memoirs 1950-1963. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and of the National Book Award for History and Biography in 1968, this is the personal and professional record of one of America’s most distinguished diplomats. An intimate and thought-provoking account of diplomatic history, it may be the “single most valuable political book written by an American in the twentieth century.” (The New Republic). “[A] remarkably candid, beautifully written and utterly fascinating intellectual career autobiography of a distinguished diplomat and scholar... This is, in short, major history, and here augmented by selections from the author’s journal and his policy memorandums. It gives an intimate view of how policy, particularly that pertaining to Soviet-American affairs, was fashioned, influenced, criticized and implemented... through it all emerges the portrait of a brilliant man of keen observation, depth of knowledge and strong opinion.” — Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times “[A] historically invaluable, often mercilessly candid ‘intellectual autobiography.’” — Murrey Marder, The Washington Post “These memoirs are expertly written, often fascinating... this is an important book, both as diplomatic history and as intellectual biography... Kennan is perhaps the most impressive figure ever to have emerged from the shadowy labyrinth of the American diplomatic establishment.” — Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books “From these pages there emerge both the sensitive, introspective, compassionate human being and the sometimes frustrated diplomat. Ranging from his observations of the German occupation of Prague to the genesis of the ‘X’ article in Foreign Affairs and the problems of the postwar world, these vignettes from the author’s diaries are skillfully linked into a consecutive story of lasting historical importance.” — John G. Stoessinger, Foreign Affairs “[A] major contribution to the diplomatic history of our time.” — Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, The Russian Review “This widely acclaimed volume — recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award — can be read as the first installment in the autobiography of an eminent historian; as the intellectual odyssey of a sensitive student of international relations; as an instructive portrait of a professional diplomat, alienated from society and impatient with domestic pressures; as a contribution to the historiography of the cold war; and as a commentary on decision making in recent American foreign policy. It is immensely useful in each area and, like all of Kennan’s works, beautifully written.” — Richard W. Leopold, The American Historical Review “George Kennan’s Memoirs: 1925-1950 may well become a standard by which future American diplomatic autobiographies will be judged — a standard difficult to emulate... [an] immensely interesting book... This biography paints a panorama of unusual personal dimensions.” — Paul Seabury, Slavic Review “Kennan was an enormously healthy and stimulating influence in our diplomatic establishment, and his Memoirs provide a provocative analysis of the intellectual, political, and military thinking that went into the evolution of our attitudes and policies for some twenty-five years.” — Smith Simpson, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “George Kennan, who already has a substantial reputation as a professional diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, has now ensured his place in history with this volume of Memoirs.” — Robert A. Divine, The Journal of Southern History “[Kennan’s] lucid, elegant, scrupulous, even finicky account of his career is an excellent way to understand exactly how our foreign policy is shaped and why it ought to be shaped differently. His ambition is to alter the conduct of American foreign policy by influencing the climate of opinion and thereby those who will formulate that policy.” — George P. Elliott, The Hudson Review “[Kennan] focuses on essentials and illuminates them; in so doing his sense of the drama of events merges with the drama of self. His literary style, genuine and full, carries well the weight of complex considerations. His sense of responsibility in public service — for the public good as he sees it — shines out truly and clearly. What a good man, what an attractive man, what an instructive and elevating commentator!” — Herbert Feis, The Virginia Quarterly Review “George Kennan’s lantern illuminates the world; it shines like a beacon in an era of militarist adventure and ‘personalized’ foreign policy.” — Harrison E. Salisbury, Saturday Review

Download or read book The Kennan Diaries written by George F. Kennan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-02-16 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark collection, spanning ninety years of U.S. history, of the never-before-published diaries of George F. Kennan, America’s most famous diplomat. On a hot July afternoon in 1953, George F. Kennan descended the steps of the State Department building as a newly retired man. His career had been tumultuous: early postings in eastern Europe followed by Berlin in 1940–41 and Moscow in the last year of World War II. In 1946, the forty-two-year-old Kennan authored the “Long Telegram,” a 5,500-word indictment of the Kremlin that became mandatory reading in Washington. A year later, in an article in Foreign Affairs, he outlined “containment,” America’s guiding strategy in the Cold War. Yet what should have been the pinnacle of his career—an ambassadorship in Moscow in 1952—was sabotaged by Kennan himself, deeply frustrated at his failure to ease the Cold War that he had helped launch. Yet, if it wasn’t the pinnacle, neither was it the capstone; over the next fifty years, Kennan would become the most respected foreign policy thinker of the twentieth century, giving influential lectures, advising presidents, and authoring twenty books, winning two Pulitzer prizes and two National Book awards in the process. Through it all, Kennan kept a diary. Spanning a staggering eighty-eight years and totaling over 8,000 pages, his journals brim with keen political and moral insights, philosophical ruminations, poetry, and vivid descriptions. In these pages, we see Kennan rambling through 1920s Europe as a college student, despairing for capitalism in the midst of the Depression, agonizing over the dilemmas of sex and marriage, becoming enchanted and then horrified by Soviet Russia, and developing into America’s foremost Soviet analyst. But it is the second half of this near-century-long record—the blossoming of Kennan the gifted author, wise counselor, and biting critic of the Vietnam and Iraq wars—that showcases this remarkable man at the height of his singular analytic and expressive powers, before giving way, heartbreakingly, to some of his most human moments, as his energy, memory, and finally his ability to write fade away. Masterfully selected and annotated by historian Frank Costigliola, the result is a landmark work of profound intellectual and emotional power. These diaries tell the complete narrative of Kennan’s life in his own intimate and unflinching words and, through him, the arc of world events in the twentieth century.

Download or read book Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin written by George F. Kennan and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The material contained in this book is drawn from lectures, some of which were delivered in 1957-1958 in the schools at Oxford University, others — in the spring of 1960 — at Harvard University... This is a study of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the major Western countries, from the inception of the Soviet regime in 1917 to the end of World War II. It is not intended as a chronological account of the happenings in this phase of diplomatic history, but rather as a series of discussions of individual episodes or problems.” — George F. Kennan, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin Kennan describes the diplomatic dilemmas that grew out of ignorance and mutual distrust, beginning with the Allied intervention in Russia in 1918, through World War I, the Versailles conference, Stalin’s bloody purges of 1934-1938, the Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact of 1939, the end of World War II, and the meeting in Yalta between Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt. “It is not often that a book as instructive as this one manages at the same time to be so engrossing that it is bound to keep even general readers fascinated long past their bedtimes. The book’s message is a stern one; the pleasure in reading it derives from the elegant and yet fresh prose style that is one of the many gifts of [the author who] is an artist as well as an experienced diplomat; a moralist as well as a consummate historian. With superb felicity and grace, he here unfolds a historical narrative rich in prophetic judgments — prophetic in the Biblical sense of the word. Not everyone, of course, will agree with all of Mr. Kennan’s conclusions, but there is so much that is useful in this volume that even those who have reservations about one or another of the judgments in it will welcome it warmly as a significant contribution in several ways.” — Marshall D. Shulman, The New York Times “Superbly concise, meaty, and lucid. It surveys the whole fascinating, involved drama of Communism’s rise to world power.” — Newsweek “Every adult American ought to read it.” — William L. Shirer “Surely one of the most important books since the end of the last war... an over-all view that transcends the provinciality of so much of our foreign policy and embraces the whole immense area from Washington to Peking.” —The New Yorker “An important, a disturbing, a deeply moving book.” — New York Herald Tribune Book Review “Not only Mr. Kennan’s finest book, but also the best that has been written on Russia in this century.” — Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart “In this absorbing and eloquent book... Mr. Kennan reviews with much perception and sensitivity the ragged course of relations between the Soviet Union and the West from 1917 to 1945. While there is much in Western understanding and action to be criticized in the early years, during the inter-war period and during World War II, Mr. Kennan is keenly aware of the intense hostility of the Communist stance which exacerbated all problems.” — Foreign Affairs “Kennan, a fine writer as well as historian and diplomat, has made a magnificent attempt to put into order the chaotic relations between Russia and the West from the Communist Revolution to the end of World War II... A most important book, deserving the widest possible readership.” — Kirkus “[A] remarkable ‘best-seller.’ This fact is a tribute to both the author and the subject with which he deals. It is superfluous to comment on Mr. Kennan’s authority or on the brilliance of his lucid prose, which are again in evidence in this work. It is a volume not easily put aside as a mere purveyor of information; it solicits judgments and proffers them lavishly, inviting agreement or dissent.” — Slavic Review “[A] valuable volume. It is full of flashes of insight, into both Soviet and Western attitudes and policies, and it reveals the painful dilemmas Wilson, Roosevelt, and other Western leaders faced in dealing with this new state and system.” — The Slavic and East European Journal

Download or read book This Kind of War written by T. R. Fehrenbach and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2000 with total page 905 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated with maps, photographs, and battlefield diagrams, this special fiftieth anniversary edition of the classic history of the Korean War is a dramatic and hard-hitting account of the conflict written from the perspective of those who fought it. Partly drawn from official records, operations journals, and histories, it is based largely on the compelling personal narratives of the small-unit commanders and their troops. Unlike any other work on the Korean War, it provides both a clear panoramic overview and a sharply drawn you were there account of American troops in fierce combat against th.

Download or read book A Voyage Remembered written by Leslie Snow and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A goldsmith and a dancer share their journey intertwined with the likes of Edward Weston, Helen Keller, Marcel Duchamp, and Nelson D. Rockefeller

Download or read book Memoirs of an Obscure Professor written by Paul F. Boller and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the heyday of McCarthyism, the Chicago Tribune, offended by something he had written, contemptuously dismissed Paul Boller as "an obscure professor" - he was then teaching at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Some forty-five years later, reflecting on the incident, Boller wrote an essay on what it was like to be an obscure professor at one of America's less publicized campuses in a conservative community during the late 1950s and early 1960s. That essay became the foundation for this collection of autobiographical selections reflecting the interests and pursuits of a man who gained national recognition, both inside the academic community and beyond, but still values his obscurity. Whether it is a study of the much-maligned Calvin Coolidge or an account of his Navy service as a translator of Japanese during World War II, Boller brings to his writing a fresh approach and a lively and wry wit.

Download or read book Letters Home written by Sylvia Plath and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 751 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters Home represents Sylvia Plath's correspondence from her time at Smith College in the early 1950s, through her meeting with, and subsequent marriage to, the poet Ted Hughes, up to her death in February 1963. The letters are addressed mainly to her mother, with whom she had an extremely close and confiding relationship, but there are also some to her brother Warren and her benefactress Mrs Prouty. Plath's energy, enthusiasm and her passionate tackling of life burst onto these pages, providing us with a vivid and intimate portrait of a woman who has come to be regarded as one of the greatest of twentieth-century poets. In addition to her capacity for domestic and writerly happiness, however, these letters also hint at Plath's potential for deep despair, which reached its crisis when she holed up in a London flat for the terrible winter of 1963.

Download or read book Extraordinary Ordinary People written by Condoleezza Rice and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl--and a young woman--trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the difference. Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman--and the first black woman ever--to serve as Secretary of State. But until she was 25 she never learned to swim, because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access. Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last. But by 1963, Birmingham had become an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told--or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice’s neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing. So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did? Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics. Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza’s passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts. From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents’ fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university’s second-in-command. An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news--just shortly before her father’s death--that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor. As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling.

Download or read book The Feminine Mystique written by Betty Friedan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001-09-17 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

Download or read book Paul VI written by Peter Hebblethwaite and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thoughtful, highly acclaimed biography of Giovanni Battista Montini, Paul VI, which sheds light on and powerfully underscores the personal and ecclesial sides of a man who brought modernity to the church.

Download or read book Five Days in November written by Clint Hill and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secret Service agent Clint Hill reveals the stories behind the iconic images of the five tragic days surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in this 60th anniversary edition of the New York Times bestseller. On November 22, 1963, three shots were fired in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the world stopped for four days. For an entire generation, it was the end of an age of innocence. That evening, a photo ran on the front pages of newspapers across the world, showing a Secret Service agent jumping on the back of the presidential limousine in a desperate attempt to protect the President and Mrs. Kennedy. That agent was Clint Hill. Now Hill commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of the tragedy with this stunning book containing more than 150 photos, each accompanied by his incomparable insider account of those terrible days. A story that has taken Hill half a century to tell, this is a “riveting, stunning narrative” (Herald & Review, Illinois) of personal and historical scope. Besides the unbearable grief of a nation and the monumental consequences of the event, the death of JFK was a personal blow to a man sworn to protect the first family, and who knew, from the moment the shots rang out in Dallas, that nothing would ever be the same.

Download or read book Memoirs of an Ex Prom Queen written by Alix Kates Shulman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now with a new preface: The “furious, fiercely funny, provocative” novel about female rebellion written decades before the #MeToo movement (Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance). Sasha Davis, smart and pretty, was once an all-American teenage beauty queen. Full of potential, she was the only student at her Midwestern high school to attend college on the East Coast. But soon her promise begins to falter. After starting graduate school in New York, Sasha gets married and drops out to take a clerical job. Consigned to the role of trophy wife, and already feeling old at twenty-four, she lives in fear of turning thirty—the year, in her mind, when her beauty will fade and life as she knows it will end. Only after a lot of sexual adventures—as well as a second marriage and motherhood—will she finally begin to figure out what’s gone wrong . . . Poignant and breathtakingly honest, Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen remains a feminist landmark—a unique blend of “fun” (Jezebel) and “devastating” (The Boston Globe). “This story, told with astringent wit, explores every facet and cliché of what it means to grow up female and beautiful.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A vivid reminder of just how much―and sometimes, how little―has changed for women . . . Typing prowess and wedding-night virginity may no longer be expected, but Shulman’s tale of Sasha Davis’s struggle to find herself amid conflicting cultural messages about beauty, brains, and sex will be resonant for many more years to come.” ―Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once “An extraordinary novel.” ―Newsweek

Download or read book We Were the Fire written by Shelia P. Moses and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The powerful story of an eleven-year-old Black boy determined to stand up for his rights, who's pulled into the action of the 1963 civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama. Rufus Jackson Jones is from Birmingham, the place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the most segregated place in the country. A place that in 1963 is full of civil rights activists including Dr. King. The adults are trying to get more attention to their cause—to show that separate is not equal. Rufus’s dad works at the steel factory, and his mom is a cook at the mill, and if they participate in marches, their bosses will fire them. So that’s where the kids decide they will come in: Nobody can fire them! So on a bright May morning in 1963, Rufus and his buddies join thousands of other students to peacefully protest in a local park. There they are met with policemen and firemen, who turn their powerful hoses on them, and that’s where Rufus realizes that they are the fire. And they will not be put out. Shelia Moses gives readers a deeply personal account of one boy’s heroism during what came to be known as the Children’s Crusade in this important novel that highlights a key turning point in the civil rights movement.

Download or read book Revisiting the Roots of the Cold War written by Michael G. Carew and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting the Roots of the Cold War is a history of the emergence of the Cold War from 1944–1948, emphasizing the recently available Soviet scholarship and information from other archives. Prior scholarship on the origins of the Cold War served as the basis for the final works of James Gaddis, George Kennan and Ernest May in the 1980s, and with no access to Soviet materials, these works ignored the effects of American demobilization and the major restructuring of the State and Defense Departments. This study represents a more realistic appraisal of the formulation of U.S. policy.