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“Marshals irrefutable evidence to succinctly demolish the mythic version of the crisis . . . sober analysis.” —The Atlantic This book exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. More than a half-century after the event, it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that Robert F. Kennedy’s Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously as historically accurate accounts of the ExComm meetings. This book, from the first historian to listen to and evaluate the White House tapes made during the crisis, does exactly that. “Stern is not alone in questioning the precision of the transcripts offered, but he has made the most painstaking attempt to clarify what was really said and done.” —Journal of American History
A comprehensive account of the ExComm meetings provides running commentary on the issues and options that were discussed, explaining in accessible terms their specific themes and the roles of individual participants while offering insight into how JFK steered policy makers away from a nuclear conflict. (History)
This enlightening book integrates humanistic and transpersonal psychotherapy principles with family systems work. Transforming the Inner and Outer Family discusses a wide range of creative methodologies, such as the use of meditation, guided imagery, and energy centers in the body to bridge the inner and outer experiences of the individual and family members. Chapters explore the healing capacity of intense affect to unify significant others through the transformation of fear, anger, and grief to understanding, compassion, love, and forgiveness. The book is practical as well as theoretical, containing many case studies focusing on individual, couples, and family therapy. In addition, a speci...
Motivational models are critical to understanding crisis decision making because leaders and their advisors are emotionally involved, intent on reducing stress, and motivated to find ways of advancing their interests while minimizing the risk of war. The principal theoretical work on the subject is Irving Janis and Leon Mann’s classic study of decision making, published in 1977. While useful, the book has a significant flaw: Janis and Mann theorize that policy maker stress during crisis is derived from decision deliberation, leading to a circular approach. This book solves the identified problem by addressing circularity between the rise of psychological stress, decision deliberation, and dysfunctional behavior with an independent measure of decision conditions using cognitive complexity. With an effective independent measure of stress, the key contribution of this volume is a reformulation of Janis and Mann’s model to render the construct more rigorous and empirically useful to the present-day study of crisis decision making.
Never has the world come as close to the catastrophic destruction that nearly came to pass in October 1962. The United States and the Soviet Union, uneasy allies in World War II but Cold War rivals after the defeat of Germany, squared off over the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. This launched 13 days of tense negotiations between the two nations, as both President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev prepared for the possibility of nuclear war. While neither man wanted a war and understood the potential consequences, the situation was not merely in their hands. Khrushchev faced pressure from Soviets to take a hardline stance against the U.S., while Kennedy faced...
Donald Trump promised to “Drain the Swamp,” by which he originally meant lobbyists. When he got in, he found an entirely different Swamp—a Deep State that had grown, layer upon layer, within the government. But he wasn’t the first to encounter entrenched Swamp opposition. Abraham Lincoln had to battle the “Slave Power Conspiracy”; Grover Cleveland was the most successful of three presidents to fight the spoils Swamp. Theodore Roosevelt found a new iteration of the Swamp awaiting him: Trusts. After World War II, John F. Kennedy discovered that he had little control over the Central Intelligence Agency, and even found he needed the CIA for his own purposes. Despite promising to shrink the bureaucracy Swamp, Ronald Reagan found himself helpless to even make a dent in it. And Trump soon learned that the Deep State could ensure no one ever brought any of its own to justice. Dragonslayers explains why these Swamps exist, and why they were—and remain—so hard to defeat.
For thirteen days in October 1962, America stood at the brink of nuclear war. Nikita Khrushchev's decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba and John F. Kennedy's defiant response introduced the possibility of unprecedented cataclysm. The immediate threat of destruction entered America's classrooms and its living rooms. Awaiting Armageddon provides the first in-depth look at this crisis as it roiled outside of government offices, where ordinary Americans realized their government was unprepared to protect either itself or its citizens from the dangers of nuclear war. During the seven days between Kennedy's announcement of a naval blockade and Khrushchev's decision to withdraw Soviet nuclear ...
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