Мы вас похороним! Nikita Khrushchev 1956

WE WILL BURY YOU – actually more of a threat about Marxist inevitability than a threat about nuclear war. When he made the threat Eisenhower was president. It took 30 years and a good many steps backwards to make a few forward but by 1986 Ronald Reagan had pretty well buried them. When Khrushchev died of a heart attack on September 11, 1971,  he was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, having been denied a state funeral and interment in the Kremlin Wall. Pravda ran a one-sentence announcement of the former premier’s death. So much for inevitability. Ironically enough it is the new Russia that is more like to bury us.

Red cloud at dawn : Truman, Stalin, and the end of the atomic monopoly  Michael D. Gordin  New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xii, 402 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [377]-379) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet test bomb, dubbed First Lightning, exploded in the deserts of Kazakhstan. The startling event was not simply a technical experiment that confirmed the ability of the Soviet Union to build nuclear bombs during a period when the United States held a steadfast monopoly; it was also an international event that marked the beginning of an arms race that would ultimately lead to nuclear proliferation beyond the two superpowers.

Most Americans believe that the Second World War ended because the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan forced it to surrender. Red Cloud at Dawn presents a different interpretation: that the military did not clearly understand the atomic bomb’s revolutionary strategic potential, that the Allies were almost as stunned by the surrender as the Japanese were by the attack, and that not only had experts planned and fully anticipated the need for a third bomb, they were skeptical about whether the atomic bomb would work at all. With these ideas, Michael Gordin reorients the historical and contemporary conversation about the A-bomb and World War II.

Gordin posits that although the bomb clearly brought with it a new level of destructive power, strategically it was regarded by decision-makers simply as a new conventional weapon, a bigger firebomb. To lend greater understanding to the thinking behind its deployment, Gordin takes the reader to the island of Tinian, near Guam, the home base for the bombing campaign, and the location from which the anticipated third atomic bomb was to be delivered. He also details how Americans generated a new story about the origins of the bomb after surrender: that the United States knew in advance that the bomb would end the war and that its destructive power was so awesome no one could resist it.

Following a trail of espionage, secrecy, deception, political brinksmanship, and technical innovation, Gordin challenges conventional technology-centered nuclear histories by looking at the prominent roles that atomic intelligence and other forms of information play in the uncertainties of nuclear arms development and political decision-making. With the use of newly opened archives, Red Cloud at Dawn focuses on the extraordinary story of First Lightning to provide a fresh understanding of the origins of the nuclear arms race, as well as the problem of proliferation.

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past… Harry S. Truman

American gunfight : the plot to kill Harry Truman, and the shoot-out that stopped it  Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge, Jr.  New York : Simon & Schuster, c 2005  Hardcover. 1st. ed. and printing. ix, 368 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. Dust Jacket. Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-348) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

American Gunfight is the fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event – the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D.C., that saved the president’s life.

It begins on November 1, 1950, an unseasonably hot afternoon in the sleepy capital. At 2:00 P.M. in his temporary residence at Blair House, the president of the United States takes a nap. At 2:20 P.M., two men approach Blair House from different directions. Oscar Collazo, a metal polisher and  Griselio Torresola, an unemployed salesman. They don’t look dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited approach. What the three White House policemen and one Secret Service agent cannot guess is that under each man’s coat is a 9mm German automatic pistol and in each head, a dream of assassin’s glory.  At point-blank range, Collazo and then Torresola draw and fire and move toward the president of the United States.

Hunter and Bainbridge tell the story of that November day with careful attention to detail. They are the first to report on the inner workings of this conspiracy; they examine the forces that led the perpetrators to conceive the plot. The authors also tell the story of the men themselves, from their youth and the worlds in which they grew up to the women they loved and who loved them to the moment the gunfire erupted.

Exuberant over his success despite British skepticism, Stillwell wrote in his diary, “WILL THIS BURN UP THE LIMEYS!

Building for victory : World War II in China, Burma, and India and the 1875th Engineer Aviation Battalion  William Collins King  Lanham, Md. : Taylor Trade Pub., 2004  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xviii, 219 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-196). Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell inspecting Chinese troops in India He is accompanied on his right by General Sun Li Zen and Lo. The former is the commanding general and the latter deputy chief of staff of the Chinese expeditionary forces.

Joe E. Brown driving jeep loaded with American G.I.’s seeing the sights of China

Agra (vicinity), India. The curiosity is mutual as American Sergeants Robert L. Snyder and LeRoy R. Bergin and the natives look each other over during a day of sightseeing at the Taj Mahal

Allied military conference in India. American and British military leaders who met in conference recently in India. Left to right: Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell; Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell, commanding all U.S. Army troops in China, Burma and India; Lieutenant General H.H. Arnold commanding the entire U.S. Army Forces; Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell, commanding the entire Service of Supply for the U.S. Army; and Field Marshal Sir John Dill

United States “lend-lease” program in eastern India. A mixed crew of English, Chinese and Indian workmen repair a lend-lease Hudson bomber which was shot up and damaged too badly for field repairs during a bombing raid on the Japanese occupied portion of Akyab, an island off the coast of Burma. The crew named the bomber “Lulu”

“Flying the Hump, Moonlight, CBI” by Tom Lea. Pilots flying
this treacherous route kept Allied supply lines open. (Army Art Collection)

Army bulldozers constructing the Ledo Road cut a path through
a hillside in the Indian jungle. (Department of the Army photograph)

Brig Gen. Frank D. Merrill (far left) watches troops cross
into Burma on the Ledo Road. (Department of the Army photograph)

Marauders rest during a break along a jungle
trail near Nhpum Ga.(Department of the Army photograph)

A 75-mm. pack howitzer supports GALAHAD’s siege operations at
Myitkyina. (Department of the Army photograph)

Aerial view of the first convoy to go from India to China over the re-
opened Burma Road. (Department of the Army photograph)

The war has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage… Hirohito

A war it was always going to lose : why Japan attacked America in 1941  Jeffrey Record  Washington, D.C. : Potomac Books, c 2011  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. xiii, 167 p. : map ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-158) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

The attack on Pearl Harbor is one of the most perplexing cases in living memory of a weaker power seeming to believe that it could vanquish a clearly superior force. On closer inspection, however, Record finds that Japan did not believe it could win; yet, the Japanese imperial command decided to attack the United States anyway.

Conventional explanations that Japan’s leaders were criminally stupid, wildly deluded, or just plumb crazy don’t fully answer all our questions, Record finds. Instead, he argues, the Japanese were driven by an insatiable appetite for national glory and economic security via the conquest of East Asia. The scope of their ambitions and their fear of economic destruction overwhelmed their knowledge that the likelihood of winning was slim and propelled them into a war they were always going to lose.

Japanese intelligence in World War II  Ken Kotani ; translated by Chiharu Kotani  Oxford, U.K. ; New York : Osprey, 2009  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing. x, 224 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-203) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

In the eyes of history, Japanese intelligence in World War II has fared very poorly. However, these historians have most often concentrated on the later years of the war, when Japan was fighting a multi-front war against numerous opponents. In this study Kotani re-examines the Japanese Intelligence department, beginning with the early phase of the war. He points out that without the intelligence gathered by the Japanese Army and Navy they would have been unable to achieve their long string of victories against the forces of Russia, China, and Great Britain. Notable in these early campaigns were the successful strikes against both Singapore and Pearl Harbor.

Yet as these victories expanded the sphere of Japanese control, they also made it harder for the intelligence services to gather accurate information about their growing list of adversaries. At the battle of Midway in 1942, Japanese intelligence suffered its worst mishap when the Americans broke their code and tricked the Japanese into revealing the target of their attack. It was a mistake from which they would never recover. As the military might of Japan was forced to retreat and her forces deteriorated, so too did her intelligence services.

A balanced program for tax reform based upon the common sense idea of lowering taxes out of surplus revenues… Andrew Mellon

That very common sense approach by the secretary of the treasury who issued the bon mot, Gentlemen prefer bonds, was the underlying idea behind Reaganomics and he sought to implement it the same way that both Coolidge and Hoover did by following more of Mellon’s advice to, give tax breaks to large corporations, so that money can trickle down to the general public, in the form of extra jobs. The problem with the application of the theory is that there were no surplus revenues – Wilson had destroyed the possibility for his successors with World War I and FDR had destroyed the possibility forever with the New Deal and World War II. But what Reagan could – and did – achieve was to prolong the growth phase of the business cycle by lowering the threat of inflation and that meant prosperity for the nation. As Mellon said, strong men have sound ideas and the force to make these ideas effective, unfortunately the quarter of a century of mental and moral weaklings who have occupied the office since haven’t had a sound idea between them and the sum total of their bad ideas from free trade to socialized medicine will make it that much more difficult for anyone to make any sort of sound idea effective.

The Reagan effect : economics and presidential leadership  John W. Sloan  Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas, c 1999  Hardcover. 1st ed. and printing.      xi, 311 p. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-297) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

His message was simple, repeated almost like a mantra: cut taxes, cut spending, reduce bureaucracy, deregulate. His followers saw him as a conservative revolutionary; his detractors saw him as Mr. Magoo. Now that Reagan‘s achievements have become more obvious, it is time for a new nonpartisan appraisal of his leadership and its impact on the nation. That is precisely what John Sloan delivers.

Sloan focuses especially on the questions raised in the highly polemical debates between conservatives and liberals concerning Reagan’s economic policies. He gives equal time to both sides, showing how liberals were wrong in their predictions of gloom, while conservatives continue to grant Reagan the credit and status than he deserves.

The Reagan Effect reveals how the failures of the Carter administration set the stage for Reagan’s success, describes how he united diverse conservative factions, and shows how Reagan’s personality affected his decision-making style. In examining the economic record, it explains how Reagan persuaded Congress to pass budget and tax cuts while funding a costly defense buildup, and it analyzes the construction of a policy regime that prolonged the growth phase of the business cycle by lowering the threat of inflation. It also provides fresh insights into the Bush administration’s responsibility for the savings and loan disaster and tells how it dealt with trade imbalances.

The political success of Reagan’s presidency, observes Sloan, can largely be attributed to the combined efforts of conservatives and pragmatists. Reagan was a populist, a former actor who knew how to deliver his message in a way that pleased his audiences and who never allowed liberal assumptions to undermine his convictions. Sloan stresses that Reagan’s rhetoric functioned to keep conservatives loyal while achieving pragmatic compromises.

Sloan suggests that the net effects of Reagan’s presidency were positive. He observes that effective government – such as relying on the Federal Reserve to control inflation – was an essential component in Reagan’s leadership, thus contradicting the antigovernment stance of many conservatives. Sloan concludes that Reagan’s impact, as opposed to his rhetoric, was not to displace liberalism but to weld conservatism to it, and that while he did not stop big government he gave the nation a pause from its worst excesses and a vision of how it could be tamed.