Search results for ""Author Douglas Brinkley""

Dean Acheson is best remembered as President Harry Truman's powerful secretary of state, the American father of NATO, and a major architect of U.S. foreign policy in the decade following the Second World War. But Acheson also played a major role in politics and foreign affairs after his tenure in the Truman administration, as an important Democratic Party activist and theorist during the Eisenhower presidency and as a valued adviser during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. This engrossing book, the first to chronicle Acheson's postsecretarial career, paints a portrait of a brilliant, irascible, and powerful man acting during a turbulent period in American history.Drawing on the recently opened Acheson papers as well as on interviews with Acheson's family and with leading public figures of the era, Douglas Brinkley tells an intriguing tale that is part biography, part diplomatic history, and part politics. Brinkley considers Acheson's role in numerous NATO-related debates and task forces, the Berlin and Cuban missile crises, Vietnam War decision-making, the Cyprus dispute of 1964, the anti-de Gaulle initiative of the 1960s, and U.S.-African policy. He describes Acheson as a staunch anticommunist with a persistent Eurocentric focus, a man who was intolerant of American leaders such as George Kennan, J. William Fulbright, and Walter Lippmann for opposing his views, and who often feuded with JFK, LBJ, Robert McNamara, and Dean Rusk. Finally, angered at the activities of anti-Vietnam War liberal Democrats, Acheson found himself in 1969 serving as one of Nixon's most important unofficial foreign policy advisers. Throughout this time, Acheson stayed in the public eye, helped by the six books he wrote after he left office (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Present at the Creation), his television appearances, lectures, testimony before Congress, and correspondence with European statesmen. Brinkley's book illuminates Acheson as elder statesman and reveals how a unique individual was able to influence policy-making and public opinion without the official trappings of office.

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For decades, Walter Cronkite was known as the most trusted man in America. Millions across the nation welcomed him into their homes, first as a print reporter for the United Press on the front lines of World War II, and later, in the emerging medium of television, as a host of numerous documentary programs and as anchor of the CBS Evening News, from 1962 until his retirement in 1981. Yet this very public figure, undoubtedly the twentieth century's most revered journalist, was a remarkably private man; few know the full story of his life. Drawing on unprecedented access to Cronkite's private papers as well as interviews with his family and friends, Douglas Brinkley now brings this American icon into focus as never before. Brinkley traces Cronkite's story from his roots in Missouri and Texas through the Great Depression, during which he began his career, to World War II, when he gained notice reporting with Allied troops from North Africa, D-day, and the Battle of the Bulge. In 1950, Edward R. Murrow recruited him to work for CBS, where he covered presidential elections, the space program, Vietnam, and the first televised broadcasts of the Olympic Games, as both a reporter and later as an anchor for the evening news. Cronkite was also witness to - and the nation's voice for - many of the most profound moments in modern American history, including the Kennedy assassination, Apollos 11 and 13, Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the Iran hostage crisis. Epic, intimate, and masterfully written, Cronkite is the biography of an extraordinary American life, told by one of our most brilliant and respected historians.

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'It is the sum of myself, as far as the written word can go' Kerouac on THE TOWN AND THE CITY Kerouac's debut novel is a great coming of age story which can be read as the essential prelude to his later classics. Inspired by grief over his father's death and gripped by determination to write the Great American Novel, he draws largely on his own New England childhood.

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The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is one of the most cherished and reviled laws ever passed. It mandates protection and preservation of all the nation’s species and biodiversity, whatever the cost. It has been a lightning rod for controversy and conflicts between industry/business and environmentalists.The year 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of this law, and provides an opportunity for a measured and thorough evaluation thereof. We cannot know today’s challenges and opportunities without understanding their histories. This book is the most comprehensive history of the ESA ever published, and the first to consider the entire history of the law from all angles in a single volume.The history of the ESA has been one of increasing impact, complexity, and controversy. In 1978, the Supreme Court declared that Congress intended for the U.S. government to save all species at any cost, and thereafter application of the ESA became steadily more controversial, as seen in the example of the northern spotted owl and the timber wars in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s and early 90s, and then everywhere as the ESA became a political football in the highly partisan environment of the late 1990s and amendments to the law ceased.This book is not only a history, but a call to action. It will take more conservation, more funding, and more innovative solutions if we are to save our wildlife and biodiversity. It will take the engagement to every American to muster the collective will to meet this challenge. The hope of this book is that we will be able to look back and say that we accomplished more in the second 50 years of the ESA than we did in the first.

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City Hall is the first book to feature striking contemporary images of the most architecturally significant city halls in the United States. This diverse collection includes New York, the oldest; Philadelphia, once the tallest building in the world; and Boston, the first major brutalist building in the United States. Organized chronologically, the book traces the evolution of American civic architecture from the early 19th century to the present day and represents diverse styles such as Federalist, art deco, and modern. Architects, current and former mayors, historians, and preservationists tell the story of how each city hall came to be, what it says about its city, and why it's important architecturally. With a foreword by noted historian Douglas Brinkley and an essay by architectural writer Thomas Mellins, City Hall spotlights these often underappreciated civic buildings and affirms architecture's unique power to express democratic ideals and inspire civic engagement.

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Hope and History is both a memoir and a call-to-action for the renewal of faith in democracy and America. US Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel presents his most important public speeches and writings, compiled and presented over eight decades of adventure and public service, woven together with anecdotes of his colorful life as a second-generation American, a soldier, a lawyer, a political activist, and a diplomat. He touches upon themes that resonate as much today as they did when he first encountered them: the impact of heroes and mentors; the tragedy of the Vietnam War; the problems of racism and desegregation in America; tackling the crisis in America's prisons; America and the Holocaust; and the plight and promise of the United Nations. Along the way, he allows us to share his journey with some of the great characters of American history: Eleanor Roosevelt, William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, President John F. Kennedy and RFK, Harry S. Truman, and Jimmy Carter. Throughout, vanden Heuvel persuades us that there is still room for optimism in public life. He shows how individuals, himself among them, have tackled some of America's most intractable domestic and foreign policy issues with ingenuity and goodwill, particularly under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and those who sought and still seek to follow in his footsteps. He is not afraid to challenge the hatred and bigotry that are an unfortunate but undeniable part of the American fabric. He exhorts us to embrace all the challenges and opportunities that life in the United States can offer.

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