Download or read book Roosevelt s Centurions written by Joseph E. Persico and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the role of a hands-on wartime leader, discussing his contributions to military strategy and analyzing how his decisions may have helped end or prolong the war.
Download or read book Roosevelt s Secret War written by Joseph E. Persico and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2002-10-22 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite all that has already been written on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Persico has uncovered a hitherto overlooked dimension of FDR's wartime leadership: his involvement in intelligence and espionage operations. Roosevelt's Secret War is crowded with remarkable revelations: -FDR wanted to bomb Tokyo before Pearl Harbor -A defector from Hitler's inner circle reported directly to the Oval Office -Roosevelt knew before any other world leader of Hitler's plan to invade Russia -Roosevelt and Churchill concealed a disaster costing hundreds of British soldiers' lives in order to protect Ultra, the British codebreaking secret -An unwitting Japanese diplomat provided the President with a direct pipeline into Hitler's councils Roosevelt's Secret War also describes how much FDR had been told--before the Holocaust--about the coming fate of Europe's Jews. And Persico also provides a definitive answer to the perennial question Did FDR know in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor? By temperament and character, no American president was better suited for secret warfare than FDR. He manipulated, compartmentalized, dissembled, and misled, demonstrating a spymaster's talent for intrigue. He once remarked, "I never let my right hand know what my left hand does." Not only did Roosevelt create America's first central intelligence agency, the OSS, under "Wild Bill" Donovan, but he ran spy rings directly from the Oval Office, enlisting well-placed socialite friends. FDR was also spied against. Roosevelt's Secret War presents evidence that the Soviet Union had a source inside the Roosevelt White House; that British agents fed FDR total fabrications to draw the United States into war; and that Roosevelt, by yielding to Churchill's demand that British scientists be allowed to work on the Manhattan Project, enabled the secrets of the bomb to be stolen. And these are only a few of the scores of revelations in this constantly surprising story of Roosevelt's hidden role in World War II.
Download or read book Roosevelt s Centurions written by Joseph E. Persico and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “FDR’s centurions were my heroes and guides. Now Joe Persico has written the best account of those leaders I've ever read.”—Colin L. Powell All American presidents are commanders in chief by law. Few perform as such in practice. In Roosevelt’s Centurions, distinguished historian Joseph E. Persico reveals how, during World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt seized the levers of wartime power like no president since Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Declaring himself “Dr. Win-the-War,” FDR assumed the role of strategist in chief, and, though surrounded by star-studded generals and admirals, he made clear who was running the war. FDR was a hands-on war leader, involving himself in everything from choosing bomber targets to planning naval convoys to the design of landing craft. Persico explores whether his strategic decisions, including his insistence on the Axis powers’ unconditional surrender, helped end or may have prolonged the war. Taking us inside the Allied war councils, the author reveals how the president brokered strategy with contentious allies, particularly the iron-willed Winston Churchill; rallied morale on the home front; and handpicked a team of proud, sometimes prickly warriors who, he believed, could fight a global war. Persico’s history offers indelible portraits of the outsize figures who roused the “sleeping giant” that defeated the Axis war machine: the dutiful yet independent-minded George C. Marshall, charged with rebuilding an army whose troops trained with broomsticks for rifles, eggs for hand grenades; Dwight Eisenhower, an unassuming Kansan elevated from obscurity to command of the greatest fighting force ever assembled; the vainglorious Douglas MacArthur; and the bizarre battlefield genius George S. Patton. Here too are less widely celebrated military leaders whose contributions were just as critical: the irascible, dictatorial navy chief, Ernest King; the acerbic army advisor in China, “Vinegar” Joe Stilwell; and Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, who zealously preached the gospel of modern air power. The Roosevelt who emerges from these pages is a wartime chess master guiding America’s armed forces to a victory that was anything but foreordained. What are the qualities we look for in a commander in chief? In an era of renewed conflict, when Americans are again confronting the questions that FDR faced—about the nature and exercise of global power—Roosevelt’s Centurions is a timely and revealing examination of what it takes to be a wartime leader in a freewheeling, complicated, and tumultuous democracy.
Download or read book Pearl Harbor written by Steven M Gillon and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy." History would prove him correct; the events of that day -- when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor -- ended the Great Depression, changed the course of FDR's presidency, and swept America into World War II. In Pearl Harbor, acclaimed historian Steven M. Gillon provides a vivid, minute-by-minute account of Roosevelt's skillful leadership in the wake of the most devastating military assault in American history. FDR proved both decisive and deceptive, inspiring the nation while keeping the real facts of the attack a secret from congressional leaders and the public. Pearl Harbor explores the anxious and emotional events surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor, showing how the president and the American public responded in the pivotal twenty-four hours that followed, a period in which America burst from precarious peace into total war.
Download or read book My American Journey written by Colin L. Powell and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-12-29 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A great American success story . . . an endearing and well-written book.”—The New York Times Book Review Colin Powell is the embodiment of the American dream. He was born in Harlem to immigrant parents from Jamaica. He knew the rough life of the streets. He overcame a barely average start at school. Then he joined the Army. The rest is history—Vietnam, the Pentagon, Panama, Desert Storm—but a history that until now has been known only on the surface. Here, for the first time, Colin Powell himself tells us how it happened, in a memoir distinguished by a heartfelt love of country and family, warm good humor, and a soldier’s directness. My American Journey is the powerful story of a life well lived and well told. It is also a view from the mountaintop of the political landscape of America. At a time when Americans feel disenchanted with their leaders, General Powell’s passionate views on family, personal responsibility, and, in his own words, “the greatness of America and the opportunities it offers” inspire hope and present a blueprint for the future. An utterly absorbing account, it is history with a vision.
Download or read book Roosevelt s Purge written by Susan Dunn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-07 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his first term in office, Franklin Roosevelt helped pull the nation out of the Great Depression with his landmark programs. In November 1936, every state except Maine and Vermont voted enthusiastically for his reelection. But then the political winds shifted. Not only did the Supreme Court block some of his transformational experiments, but he also faced serious opposition within his own party. Conservative Democrats such as Senators Walter George of Georgia and Millard Tydings of Maryland allied themselves with Republicans to vote down New Deal bills. Susan Dunn tells the dramatic story of FDRÕs unprecedented battle to drive his foes out of his party by intervening in Democratic primaries and backing liberal challengers to conservative incumbents. Reporters branded his tactic a ÒpurgeÓÑand the inflammatory label stuck. Roosevelt spent the summer months of 1938 campaigning across the country, defending his progressive policies and lashing out at conservatives. Despite his efforts, the Democrats took a beating in the midterm elections. The purge stemmed not only from FDRÕs commitment to the New Deal but also from his conviction that the nation needed two responsible political parties, one liberal, the other conservative. Although the purge failed, at great political cost to the president, it heralded the realignment of political parties that would take place in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. By the end of the century, the irreconcilable tensions within the Democratic Party had exploded, and the once solidly Democratic South was solid no more. It had taken sixty years to resolve the tangled problems to which FDR devoted one frantic, memorable summer.
Download or read book FDR s 12 Apostles written by Hal Vaughan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2006-10-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR sent twelve "vice consuls" to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia on a secret mission. Their objective? To prepare the groundwork for what eventually became Operation TORCH, the Allied invasion of North Africa that repelled the Nazis and also enabled the liberation of Italy. This spy network included an ex-Cartier jewel salesman and wine merchant, a madcap Harvard anthropologist, a Parisian playboy who ran with Hemingway, ex-French Foreign Legionnaires and Paris bankers, and a WWI hero. Based on recently declassified foreign records, as well as the memoirs of Ridgeway Brewster Knight (one of the twelve “apostles”), this fast-paced historical account gives the first behind-the-scenes look at FDR's top-secret plan. .
Download or read book Nothing Lasts Forever written by Sidney Sheldon and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-06-22 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Racing from the life-and-death decisions of a big San Francisco hospital to the tension-packed fireworks of a murder trial, this story lays bare the ambitions and fears of healers and killers, lovers and betrayers. As the book surges toward its unpredictable climax, Sidney Sheldon proves once again that no reader can outguess the master of the unexpected.
Download or read book American Warlords written by Jonathan W. Jordan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Jonathan W. Jordan—author of Brothers, Rivals, Victors—comes the intimate true story of President Franklin Roosevelt’s inner circle of military leadership, the team of rivals who shaped World War II and America. “Superbly written, well researched, and highly interesting.”—Jean Edward Smith, New York Times bestselling author of FDR and Eisenhower in War and Peace After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was wakened from its slumber of isolationism. To help him steer the nation through the coming war, President Franklin Roosevelt turned to the greatest “team of rivals” since the days of Lincoln: Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Admiral Ernest J. King, and General George C. Marshall. Together, these four men led the nation through history’s most devastating conflict and ushered in a new era of unprecedented American influence, all while forced to overcome the profound personal and political differences which divided them. A startling and intimate reassessment of U.S. leadership during World War II, American Warlords is a remarkable glimpse behind the curtain of presidential power.
Download or read book The Hopkins Touch written by David Roll and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2013 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging biography of one of FDR's closest advisors and political point man during World War II, The Hopkins Touch brings this significant figure to life, through previously private diaries and letters.
Download or read book The Centurions written by Jean Larteguy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The military cult classic with resonance to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam—now back in print When The Centurions was first published in 1960, readers were riveted by the thrilling account of soldiers fighting for survival in hostile environments. They were equally transfixed by the chilling moral question the novel posed: how to fight when the “age of heroics is over.” As relevant today as it was half a century ago, The Centurions is a gripping military adventure, an extended symposium on waging war in a new global order, and an essential investigation of the ethics of counterinsurgency. Featuring a foreword by renowned military expert Robert D. Kaplan, this important wartime novel will again spark debate about controversial tactics in hot spots around the world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book No End Save Victory written by David Kaiser and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first hundred days may be the most celebrated period of his presidency, the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor proved the most critical. Beginning as early as 1939 when Germany first attacked Poland, Roosevelt skillfully navigated a host of challenges -- a reluctant population, an unprepared military, and disagreements within his cabinet -- to prepare the country for its inevitable confrontation with the Axis. In No End Save Victory, esteemed historian David Kaiser draws on extensive archival research to reveal the careful preparations that enabled the United States to win World War II. Alarmed by Germany and Japan's aggressive militarism, Roosevelt understood that the United States would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict raging in Europe and Asia. However, the American populace, still traumatized by memories of the First World War, was reluctant to intervene in European and Asian affairs. Even more serious was the deplorable state of the American military. In September of 1940, Roosevelt's military advisors told him that the US would not have the arms, ammunition, or men necessary to undertake any major military operation overseas -- let alone win such a fight -- until April of 1942. Aided by his closest military and civilian collaborators, Roosevelt pushed a series of military expansions through Congress that nearly doubled the size of the US Navy and Army, and increased production of the arms, tanks, bombers, and warships that would allow America to prevail in the coming fight. Highlighting Roosevelt's deft management of the strong personalities within his cabinet and his able navigation of the shifting tides of war, No End Save Victory is the definitive account of America's preparations for and entry into World War II. As Kaiser shows, it was Roosevelt's masterful leadership and prescience that prepared the reluctant nation to fight -- and gave it the tools to win.
Download or read book Eleventh Month Eleventh Day Eleventh Hour written by Joseph E. Persico and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war’s last hour. Persico recounts the war’s bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory. The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called “the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought.”
Download or read book War and Peace written by Nigel Hamilton and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the much-anticipated conclusion to his masterful trilogy chronicling the wartime career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, renowned military and political biographer Nigel Hamilton aligns triumph with tragedy to show how FDR was the architect of a victorious peace that he would not live to witness. Providing the definitive account of the events in Normandy on 6 June 1944, Hamilton also reveals the fraught nature of the relationship between the greatest wartime leaders of the Allied forces. Using hitherto unpublished documents and interviews to counter the famous narrative of World War II strategy given by Winston Churchill in his memoirs, Hamilton highlights the true significance of FDR's leadership. Seventy-five years after the D-Day landings, we finally see, close up and in dramatic detail, who was responsible for rescuing – and insisting upon – the great American-led invasion of France in June 1944, and exactly why that invasion was orchestrated by Eisenhower. War and Peace is the rousing final installment in one of the most important historical biographies of the twenty-first century, which demonstrates how FDR's failing health only spurred him on in his efforts to build a US-backed post-war world order. In this stirring account of the life of one of the most celebrated political leaders of our time, Hamilton hails the President as the sole person capable of anticipating the requirements of peace in order to bring an end to the war.
Download or read book Franklin and Lucy written by Joseph E. Persico and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-04-29 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Just when you thought you knew everything about Franklin D. Roosevelt, think again. Joseph E. Persico [is] one of America’s finest historians. . . . You can’t properly understand FDR the man without reading this landmark study.”—Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University “Persico’s exploration of FDR’s emotional life is fascinating.”—USA Today In Franklin and Lucy, acclaimed author and historian Joseph E. Persico explores FDR’s romance with Lucy Rutherfurd. Persico’s provocative conclusions about their relationship are informed by a revealing range of sources, including never-before-published letters and documents from Lucy Rutherfurd’s estate that attest to the intensity of the affair, which lasted much longer than was previously acknowledged.FDR’s connection with Lucy also creates an opportunity for Persico to take a more penetrating look at the other women in FDR’s life. We come to see more clearly how FDR’s infidelity contributed to Eleanor Roosevelt’s eventual transformation from a repressed Victorian to perhaps the greatest American woman of her century; how FDR’s strong-willed mother helped to strengthen his resolve in overcoming personal and public adversity; and how both paramours and platonic friends completed the world that FDR inhabited. In focusing on Lucy Rutherfurd and the other women who mattered to Roosevelt, Persico renders the most intimate portrait yet of an enigmatic giant of American history. Praise for Franklin and Lucy “Persico is judicious in his treatment of these sensitive matters. . . . He understands that Lucy Mercer helped FDR awaken his capacity for love and compassion, and thus helped him become the man to whom the nation will be eternally in debt.”—The Washington Post Book World “A stylish and well-written book filled with interesting characters, marital dramas and spylike subterfuge.”—Chicago Tribune “A powerful narrative that rarely fails to pull you along to the next chapter.”—Louisville Courier-Journal “Utterly absorbing.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Download or read book FDR The First Hundred Days written by Anthony J. Badger and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hundred Days, FDR's first 15 weeks in office, was a time of unprecedented governmental activity in America. In this account, Anthony J. Badger reinterprets the period as an exercise in exceptional political craftsmanship.
Download or read book We Do Our Part written by Charles Peters and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2019 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary editor who founded the Washington Monthly explores "the resentful, unequal, uncaring parts of today's American culture that Trump has inflamed and that have made Trump possible--and how to cope with them" (The Atlantic). Foreword by Jon Meacham With clarity and wit, the legendary editor Charles Peters explains the chasm that defines us today: the split between the educated elite and the working-class, rural, and religious voters who live in what's condescendingly--but tellingly--known as flyover country. The beginning of the end of Trumpism will come when blue-state sophisticates confront their role in creating the political, economic, and cultural resentments that propelled the forty-fifth president into office. Too many Democrats lost touch with the average American, Peters argues, when the liberal elite became more concerned with being smarter, having better taste, and making more money than with understanding why workers were earning less and hated being regarded with contempt. It was this hatred of being looked down on as bigoted boobs in polyester that united working-class, rural, and evangelical voters, and helped set the stage for the culturally populist backlash of 2016 and beyond. In We Do Our Part, Peters shows us where we have been and where we are going, drawing on his invaluable perspective as a man who has seen America's better days and still believes in the promise that lies ahead. Praise for We Do Our Part "[Peters] weaves a synthesis of mainstream and progressive, centrist and popular thought that would re-anchor the Democratic Party, both in its own traditions and in outreach to the restless, angry swath of the country that elected President Trump. . . . Peters is an American original."--The Washington Post "A great book about modern American history."--Chris Matthews, Hardball
