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Book FDR s Prisoner Spy

Download or read book FDR s Prisoner Spy written by Thomas Hayes and published by Pacifica Press (CA). This book was released on 1999 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hayes, an educated, high ranking officer in World War II, portrays the deprivation and chaos surrounding the transient population of Bilibid, clearinghouse for all prison camps in the Philippines. His account is also that of a spymaster so driven by his duty as to be able to establish an espionage r

Book Roosevelt s Secret War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joseph E. Persico
  • Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
  • Release : 2002-10-22
  • ISBN : 0375761268
  • Pages : 594 pages

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.

Book FDR s 12 Apostles

    Book Details:
  • Author : Hal Vaughan
  • Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
  • Release : 2006-10-01
  • ISBN : 1599216981
  • Pages : 329 pages

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 329 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. .

Book Roosevelt s Centurions

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joseph E. Persico
  • Publisher : Random House
  • Release : 2013-05-28
  • ISBN : 0679645438
  • Pages : 689 pages

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.

Book FDR and the Jews

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard Breitman
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2013-03-19
  • ISBN : 0674073673
  • Pages : 410 pages

Download or read book FDR and the Jews written by Richard Breitman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly seventy-five years after World War II, a contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler's Europe. Defenders claim that FDR saved millions of potential victims by defeating Nazi Germany. Others revile him as morally indifferent and indict him for keeping America's gates closed to Jewish refugees and failing to bomb Auschwitz's gas chambers. In an extensive examination of this impassioned debate, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman find that the president was neither savior nor bystander. In FDR and the Jews, they draw upon many new primary sources to offer an intriguing portrait of a consummate politician-compassionate but also pragmatic-struggling with opposing priorities under perilous conditions. For most of his presidency Roosevelt indeed did little to aid the imperiled Jews of Europe. He put domestic policy priorities ahead of helping Jews and deferred to others' fears of an anti-Semitic backlash. Yet he also acted decisively at times to rescue Jews, often withstanding contrary pressures from his advisers and the American public. Even Jewish citizens who petitioned the president could not agree on how best to aid their co-religionists abroad. Though his actions may seem inadequate in retrospect, the authors bring to light a concerned leader whose efforts on behalf of Jews were far greater than those of any other world figure. His moral position was tempered by the political realities of depression and war, a conflict all too familiar to American politicians in the twenty-first century.

Book Mrs  Roosevelt s Confidante

Download or read book Mrs Roosevelt s Confidante written by Susan Elia MacNeal and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this riveting mystery from Susan Elia MacNeal, England’s most daring spy, Maggie Hope, travels across the pond to America, where a looming scandal poses a grave threat to the White House and the Allied cause. December 1941. Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill arrives in Washington, D.C., along with special agent Maggie Hope. Posing as his typist, she is accompanying the prime minister as he meets with President Roosevelt to negotiate the United States’ entry into World War II. When one of the First Lady’s aides is mysteriously murdered, Maggie is quickly drawn into Mrs. Roosevelt’s inner circle—as ER herself is implicated in the crime. Maggie knows she must keep the investigation quiet, so she employs her unparalleled skills at code breaking and espionage to figure out who would target Mrs. Roosevelt, and why. What Maggie uncovers is a shocking conspiracy that could jeopardize American support for the war and leave the fate of the world hanging dangerously in the balance. Praise for Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante “MacNeal paints an engrossing portrait of a country on the verge of war, with many laws suspended and prejudice rife—a world not that much different from today.”—Kirkus Reviews “MacNeal’s fifth Maggie Hope mystery is another solidly researched entry with the indomitable Maggie in top form.”—Booklist “Another winner filled both with fact and marvelous fiction . . . Maggie is a wonderful character with the strength and determination, as well as intelligence, to make her a resourceful spy.”—RT Book Reviews “MacNeal’s images and characters are true to the time, and the resonance of several of the subplots with current events deepen the impact of the tale; MacNeal is to be commended for her skillful weaving of racial and gender issues into an already complex political picture. . . . There’s a tremendous amount of world and U.S. history in this delightful volume.”—Historical Novels Review “Addictive . . . [MacNeal] paints convincing portraitures of the Roosevelts and other real-life historical figures. . . . The author continues to tackle heady issues while giving us a beloved heroine to root for. Wrought with peril and tension and extraordinarily rich in detail and research, Hope’s latest adventure will not disappoint fans of the series.”—Fredericksburg Free Lance–Star Praise for the bestselling Maggie Hope mysteries “You’ll be [Maggie Hope’s] loyal subject, ready to follow her wherever she goes.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] stellar series.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “A treat for WWII buffs and mystery lovers alike.”—Booklist

Book The Venona Secrets

    Book Details:
  • Author : Herbert Romerstein
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2001-10-01
  • ISBN : 1596987324
  • Pages : 648 pages

Download or read book The Venona Secrets written by Herbert Romerstein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-10-01 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Venona Secretspresents one of the last great, untold stories of World War II and the Cold War. In 1995, secret Soviet cable traffic from the 1940s that the United States intercepted and eventually decrypted finally became available to American historians. Now, after spending more than five years researching all the available evidence, espionage experts Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel reveal the full, shocking story of the days when Soviet spies ran their fingers through America's atomic-age secrets. Included in The Venona Secrets are the details of the spying activities that reached from Harry Hopkins in Franklin Roosevelt s White House to Alger Hiss in the State Department to Harry Dexter White in the Treasury. More than that, The Venona Secrets exposes: • Information that links Albert Einstein to Soviet intelligence and conclusive evidence showing that J. Robert Oppenheimer gave Moscow our atomic secrets. • How Soviet espionage reached its height when the United States and the Soviet Union were supposedly allies in World War II. • The previously unsuspected vast network of Soviet spies in America. • How the Venona documents confirm the controversial revelations made in the 1940s by former Soviet agents Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley. • The role of the American Communist Party in supporting and directing Soviet agents. • How Stalin s paranoia had him target Jews (code-named Rats ) and Trotskyites even after Trotsky’s death. • How the Soviets penetrated America’s own intelligence services. The Venona Secrets is a masterful compendium of spy versus spy that puts the Venona transcripts in context with secret FBI reports, congressional investigations, and documents recently uncovered in the former Soviet archives. Romerstein and Breindel cast a spotlight on one of the most shadowy episodes in recent American history - a past when by our very own government officials, whether wittingly or unwittingly, shielded treason infected Washington and Soviet agents.

Book The Jews Should Keep Quiet

Download or read book The Jews Should Keep Quiet written by Rafael Medoff and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on recently discovered documents, The Jews Should Keep Quiet reassesses the hows and whys behind the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration's fateful policies during the Holocaust. Rafael Medoff delves into difficult truths: With FDR's consent, the administration deliberately suppressed European immigration far below the limits set by U.S. law. His administration also refused to admit Jewish refugees to the U.S. Virgin Islands, dismissed proposals to use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees, and rejected pleas to drop bombs on the railways leading to Auschwitz, even while American planes were bombing targets only a few miles away--actions that would not have conflicted with the larger goal of winning the war. What motivated FDR? Medoff explores the sensitive question of the president's private sentiments toward Jews. Unmasking strong parallels between Roosevelt's statements regarding Jews and Asians, he connects the administration's policies of excluding Jewish refugees and interning Japanese Americans. The Jews Should Keep Quiet further reveals how FDR's personal relationship with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewry's foremost leader in the 1930s and 1940s, swayed the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Documenting how Roosevelt and others pressured Wise to stifle American Jewish criticism of FDR's policies, Medoff chronicles how and why the American Jewish community largely fell in line with Wise. Ultimately Medoff weighs the administration's realistic options for rescue action, which, if taken, would have saved many lives.

Book Perjury

Download or read book Perjury written by Allen Weinstein and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1997 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 3, 1948, "Time" magazine editor Whittaker Chambers made a stunning allegation before the House Un-American Activities Committee: Alger Hiss, former high-ranking State Department official, had served with him in the Communist underground. Hiss's defense was the gripping story of its day, and the question of his guilt remains an enigma. This book provides fascinating insights into the case and into the American political life of the 1930s and 1940s. of photos.

Book Spies  Patriots  and Traitors

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kenneth A. Daigler
  • Publisher : Georgetown University Press
  • Release : 2014-04-23
  • ISBN : 1626160511
  • Pages : 336 pages

Download or read book Spies Patriots and Traitors written by Kenneth A. Daigler and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Students and enthusiasts of American history are familiar with the Revolutionary War spies Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold, but few studies have closely examined the wider intelligence efforts that enabled the colonies to gain their independence. Spies, Patriots, and Traitors provides readers with a fascinating, well-documented, and highly readable account of American intelligence activities during the era of the Revolutionary War, from 1765 to 1783, while describing the intelligence sources and methods used and how our Founding Fathers learned and practiced their intelligence role. The author, a retired CIA officer, provides insights into these events from an intelligence professional’s perspective, highlighting the tradecraft of intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert actions and relating how many of the principles of the era’s intelligence practice are still relevant today. Kenneth A. Daigler reveals the intelligence activities of famous personalities such as Samuel Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Nathan Hale, John Jay, and Benedict Arnold, as well as many less well-known figures. He examines the important role of intelligence in key theaters of military operations, such as Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and in General Nathanael Greene’s campaign in South Carolina; the role of African Americans in the era’s intelligence activities; undertakings of networks such as the Culper Ring; and intelligence efforts and paramilitary actions conducted abroad. Spies, Patriots, and Traitors adds a new dimension to our understanding of the American Revolution. The book’s scrutiny of the tradecraft and management of Revolutionary War intelligence activities will be of interest to students, scholars, intelligence professionals, and anyone who wants to learn more about this fascinating era of American history.

Book The Train to Crystal City

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jan Jarboe Russell
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2015-01-20
  • ISBN : 1451693680
  • Pages : 432 pages

Download or read book The Train to Crystal City written by Jan Jarboe Russell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II: “A must-read….The Train to Crystal City is compelling, thought-provoking, and impossible to put down” (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis). During World War II, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during the war, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called “quiet passage.” Hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City were exchanged for other more ostensibly important Americans—diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and missionaries—behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. “In this quietly moving book” (The Boston Globe), Jan Jarboe Russell focuses on two American-born teenage girls, uncovering the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families’ subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists. Their stories of day-to-day life at the camp, from the ten-foot high security fence to the armed guards, daily roll call, and censored mail, have never been told. Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in American history, The Train to Crystal City reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, the secrets of FDR’s tactics to rescue high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan, and above all, “is about identity, allegiance, and home, and the difficulty of determining the loyalties that lie in individual human hearts” (Texas Observer).

Book Prisoners of War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Arnold Krammer
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
  • Release : 2007-11-30
  • ISBN : 0313087156
  • Pages : 214 pages

Download or read book Prisoners of War written by Arnold Krammer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2007-11-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's current War on Terror is causing a readjustment of centuries of POW policies. Prisoners of war are once again in the news as America and Western Europe grapple with a new, faceless enemy and the rules of war and the torture of POWs are open to reconsideration. Until very recently, there has been astonishingly little written on the subject of prisoners of war. Yet, to understand the present, it is critical to look back over history. To that end, Arnold Krammer examines the fate of war prisoners from Biblical and Medieval times through the halting evolution of international law to the current reshuffling of the rules. The issue of prisoners of war is of more immediate concern now than ever before and an examination of the history of their treatment and current status may well influence foreign policy. The fate of war prisoners through history has been cruel and haphazard. The lives of captives hung by a thread. Execution, enslavement, torture, or being held for ransom were equally likely. International agreements developed haltingly through the 19th and 20th centuries to culminate in the Geneva Accords of 1929. America's current War on Terror is causing a readjustment of centuries of POW policies. Prisoners of war are once again in the news as America and Western Europe grapple with a new, faceless enemy and the rules of war and the torture of POWs are open to reconsideration. Until very recently, there has been astonishingly little written on the subject of prisoners of war. Yet, to understand the present, it is critical to look back over history. To that end, Arnold Krammer examines the fate of war prisoners from Biblical and Medieval times through the halting evolution of international law to the current reshuffling of the rules. Since biblical times, war captives have been considered property and counted as booty to be enslaved or killed. Americans were interested in generals and weapons and battles, but not the fate of prisoners of war. The Second World War, when 90,000 Americans fell into enemy hands, began to change that. Concern for our POWs in Germany and Japan, and close contact with enemy camps in America began to change our attitudes. However, it was the Vietnam War, media-driven and polarizing, that caused the American public to truly reevaluate the plight of its sons and brothers, heroic and clearly loyal, as they fell into the hands of an inscrutable and apparently unyielding distant enemy. More recently, during the first Gulf War of 1991 and the current War on Terrorism, the issue of prisoners of war has moved to center stage, involving the clash of ideologies, politics, and expediency. Since 9/11, the rights and safety of prisoners of war caught up in the War on Terror have been debated in Congress and adjudicated on by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whose conclusions were protested by numerous organizations. The issue of prisoners of war is of more immediate concern now than ever before, and an examination of the history of their treatment and current status may well influence foreign policy.

Book That Man

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robert H. Jackson
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2004-12-23
  • ISBN : 9780195177572
  • Pages : 352 pages

Download or read book That Man written by Robert H. Jackson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-23 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This intimate portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt was written by his close friend and associate, the late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson.

Book Such Splendid Prisons

    Book Details:
  • Author : Harvey Solomon
  • Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
  • Release : 2020-01-01
  • ISBN : 164012084X
  • Pages : 359 pages

Download or read book Such Splendid Prisons written by Harvey Solomon and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the chaotic days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration made a dubious decision affecting hundreds of Axis diplomats remaining in the nation’s capital. To encourage reciprocal treatment of U.S. diplomats trapped abroad, Roosevelt sent Axis diplomats to remote luxury hotels—a move that enraged Americans stunned by the attack. This cause célèbre drove a fascinating yet forgotten story: the roundup, detention, and eventual repatriation of more than a thousand German, Japanese, Italian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian diplomats, families, staff, servants, journalists, students, businessmen, and spies. Such Splendid Prisons follows five of these internees whose privileged worlds came crashing down after December 7, 1941: a suave, calculating Nazi ambassador and his charming but conflicted wife; a wily veteran Japanese journalist; a beleaguered American wife of a Japanese spy posing as a diplomat; and a spirited but naive college-aged daughter of a German military attaché. The close, albeit luxurious, proximity in which these Axis power emissaries were forced to live with each other stripped away the veneer of false prewar diplomatic bonhomie. Conflicts ran deep not only among the captives but also among the rival U.S. agencies overseeing a detainment fraught with uncertainty, duplicity, lust, and romance. Harvey Solomon re-creates this wartime American period of deluxe detention, public outrage, hidden agendas, rancor and racism, and political machinations in a fascinating but forgotten story.

Book FDR Goes to War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Burton W. Folsom
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2011-10-11
  • ISBN : 1439183228
  • Pages : 386 pages

Download or read book FDR Goes to War written by Burton W. Folsom and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of New Deal or Raw Deal?, called “eye-opening” by the National Review, comes a fascinating exposé of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s destructive wartime legacy—and its adverse impact on America’s economic and foreign policies today. Did World War II really end the Great Depression—or did President Franklin Roosevelt’s poor judgment and confused management leave Congress with a devastating fiscal mess after the final bomb was dropped? In this provocative new book, historians Burton W. Folsom, Jr., and Anita Folsom make a compelling case that FDR’s presidency led to evasive and self-serving wartime policies. At a time when most Americans held isolationist sentiments—a backlash against the stunning carnage of World War I—Roosevelt secretly favored an aggressive interventionist foreign policy. Yet, throughout the 1930s, he spent lavishly on his disastrous New Deal programs and slashed defense spending, leaving America vastly unprepared for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the challenge of fighting World War II. History books tell us the wartime economy was a boon, thanks to massive government spending. But the skyrocketing national debt, food rations, nonexistent luxuries, crippling taxes, labor strikes, and dangerous work of the time tell a different story—one that is hardly the stuff of recovery. Instead, the war ushered in a new era of imperialism for the executive branch. Roosevelt seized private property, conducted illegal wiretaps, tried to silence domestic opposition, and interned 110,000 Japanese Americans. He set a dangerous precedent for entangling alliances in foreign affairs, including his remarkable courtship of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, while millions of Americans showed the courage, perseverance, and fortitude to make the weapons and fight the war. Was Roosevelt a great wartime leader, as historians almost unanimously assert? The Folsoms offer a thought-provoking revision of his controversial legacy. FDR Goes to War will make America take a second look at one of its most complicated presidents.

Book Wild Bill Donovan

Download or read book Wild Bill Donovan written by Douglas Waller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Entertaining history...Donovan was a combination of bold innovator and imprudent rule bender, which made him not only a remarkable wartime leader but also an extraordinary figure in American history" (The New York Times Book Review). He was one of America's most exciting and secretive generals--the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, "Wild Bill" Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country's first national intelligence agency) and the father of today's CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before. Now, veteran journalist Douglas Waller has mined government and private archives throughout the United States and England, drawn on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and interviewed scores of Donovan's relatives, friends, and associates to produce a riveting biography of one of the most powerful men in modern espionage. William Joseph Donovan's life was packed with personal drama. The son of poor Irish Catholic parents, he married into Protestant wealth and fought heroically in World War I, where he earned the nickname "Wild Bill" for his intense leadership and the Medal of Honor for his heroism. After the war he made millions as a Republican lawyer on Wall Street until FDR, a Democrat, tapped him to be his strategic intelligence chief. A charismatic leader, Donovan was revered by his secret agents. Yet at times he was reckless--risking his life unnecessarily in war zones, engaging in extramarital affairs that became fodder for his political enemies--and he endured heartbreaking tragedy when family members died at young ages. Wild Bill Donovan reads like an action-packed spy thriller, with stories of daring young men and women in his OSS sneaking behind enemy lines for sabotage, breaking into Washington embassies to steal secrets, plotting to topple Adolf Hitler, and suffering brutal torture or death when they were captured by the Gestapo. It is also a tale of political intrigue, of infighting at the highest levels of government, of powerful men pitted against one another. Donovan fought enemies at home as often as the Axis abroad. Generals in the Pentagon plotted against him. J. Edgar Hoover had FBI agents dig up dirt on him. Donovan stole secrets from the Soviets before the dawn of the Cold War and had intense battles with Winston Churchill and British spy chiefs over foreign turf. Separating fact from fiction, Waller investigates the successes and the occasional spectacular failures of Donovan's intelligence career. It makes for a gripping and revealing portrait of this most controversial spymaster.

Book True Believer

Download or read book True Believer written by Kati Marton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'True Believer' is a suspenseful real-life spy thriller of danger, misplaced loyalties, betrayal, treachery and pure evil with a plot twist worthy of John Le Carre.