Free PDF Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reaga n, by Jeff Greenfield
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Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reaga n, by Jeff Greenfield
Free PDF Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reaga n, by Jeff Greenfield
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The New York Times bestseller from Jeff Greenfield, the renowned CBS News senior political correspondent and veteran of CNN and ABC news, offering an alternative history of America. These things are true: * In December 1960, a suicide bomber paused when he saw the young President-elect John F. Kennedy's family come to the door to wave good-bye.... * In June 1968, Robert F. Kennedy declared victory in California, and then instead of heading to another ballroom, as intended, was hustled off through the kitchen.... * In October 1976, President Ford made a critical gaffe in a debate against Jimmy Carter, turning the tide in an election that had been rapidly narrowing. But what if they had gone the other way? In three narratives based on memoirs, oral histories, fresh reporting with key participants, and his own knowledge of the principal players, Jeff Greenfield explores how accidents of fate could have altered the course of history. The scenarios that Greenfield depicts are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible.
- Sales Rank: #332026 in Books
- Published on: 2012-02-07
- Released on: 2012-02-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.10" h x .90" w x 6.00" l, .96 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 448 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Speculation isn't history, but it's catnip to pundits and journalists like veteran CBS News reporter and commentator Greenfield (The Real Campaign), who can be excused for this romp into what ifs. He rightly says that alternative history's foundation is plausibility. And since he's read widely in the sources, his excursions into possible histories are decently anchored to the ground. In the first narrative, an actual failed attempt to assassinate JFK before his inauguration instead succeeds. LBJ takes his place, Guantánamo is wiped out by a rogue Soviet missile, and war with the U.S.S.R. is only narrowly averted. In the second narrative, Robert Kennedy isn't assassinated, beats Nixon in 1968, winds down the Vietnam War, and with no Watergate scandal, the cultural changes of the 1970s are averted. The third account has Ford winning re-election, but in 1980 it's Hart vs. Reagan, and Hart wins. Of course, there are other possible scenarios, which Greenfield doesn't discuss. And in these novelistic narratives, readers drown in excess, irrelevant detail (dinner menus, precise times of meetings, exact conversations)—all wonkish pundit stuff, and none essential to Greenfield's purpose. In the end, fun but insubstantial. (Mar.)
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From Booklist
Greenfield, chief political correspondent for CBS News, is also a successful novelist. Here, he tries something different: alternate history, delivering takes on three different moments in the not-so-distant American past. Not many people remember that in December 1960, President-elect Kennedy was almost assassinated. What if Richard Pavlick had gotten to Kennedy three years before Lee Harvey Oswald? Conversely, what if Robert Kennedy had not gone through the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel where Sirhan Sirhan lay in wait? And, in 1976, had Gerald Ford not made a mistake in his debate with Jimmy Carter, that election might have gone a different way. Inevitably, speculation plays a role in Greenfield�s accounts, but he bolsters possible scenarios with ancedotes, quotes, and oral histories, all of which are sourced at the end of the book. This reliance on sources is why Greenfield prefers that his work be called nonfiction, though some may disagree. Perhaps readers who remember the actual events and casts of players will be the book�s best audience, but any history buff will appreciate these fascinating reinterpertations. --Ilene Cooper
Review
Praise for "Then Everything Changed":
"Political junkies always play the 'what-if' game. Jeff Greenfield has taken it and turned it into something else entirely - a trio of thought-provoking, interesting, and downright clever scenarios which remind us just how much individuals do matter."
-Bob Schieffer
"Jeff Greenfield is a wonderful story-teller and a keen student of politics. A powerful what-if book that seems painfully, tantalizingly real."
-Evan Thomas, Author, "The War Lovers, Sea of Thunder", and "Robert Kennedy: His Life"
"Filled with fresh revelations and brilliant speculation, Jeff Greenfield's alternative history is so detailed and persuasive - and the behavior of its protagonists so utterly believable - that it feels like reality itself. This is a remarkable feat of insight, imagination, and storytelling."
-Richard North Patterson
Praise for "Then Everything Changed"
"Political junkies always play the 'what-if' game. Jeff Greenfield has taken it and turned it into something else entirely - a trio of thought-provoking, interesting, and downright clever scenarios which remind us just how much individuals do matter."
-Bob Schieffer
"Jeff Greenfield is a wonderful story-teller and a keen student of politics. A powerful what-if book that seems painfully, tantalizingly real."
-Evan Thomas, Author, "The War Lovers, Sea of Thunder", and "Robert Kennedy: His Life"
"Filled with fresh revelations and brilliant speculation, Jeff Greenfield's alternative history is so detailed and persuasive - and the behavior of its protagonists so utterly believable - that it feels like reality itself. This is a remarkable feat of insight, imagination, and storytelling."
-Richard North Patterson
"Shrewdly written...riveting...Thanks to Mr. Greenfield's own familiarity with American politics and a lot of energetic research, he turns these twists of fate into accelerating historical snowballs that rumble through our recent history, altering the social landscape in way both small and large. In doing so he's produced three slyly observed novellas that...have the verisimilitude of real life."
-Michiko Kakutani, "New York Times"
"Political junkies always play the 'what-if' game. Jeff Greenfield has taken it and turned it into something else entirely - a trio of thought-provoking, interesting, and downright clever scenarios which remind us just how much individuals do matter."
-Bob Schieffer
"Jeff Greenfield is a wonderful story-teller and a keen student of politics. A powerful what-if book that seems painfully, tantalizingly real."
-Evan Thomas, Author, "The War Lovers, Sea of Thunder," and "Robert Kennedy: His Life"
"Filled with fresh revel
Most helpful customer reviews
42 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
A Fun Romp through Two Decades of American Politics
By Stephen
"...playing with history is a small bit of payback for the way history has played with us."
Historical speculation may not be fruitful, but it's fun -- and former Kennedy speechwriter and longtime political journalist Jeff Greenfield definitely has his fill of it, presenting three alternate history scenarios spanning two decades. He begins with the assassination of John F. Kennedy nearly two months before his inauguration as President, resets the clock and jumps to a kitchen in Los Angeles, where JFK's brother Robert narrowly escaped an attempt on his own life. After following RFK's bitter election campaign, Greenfield restores reality again and moves us into the seventies, shortly before Gerald Ford informed Jimmy Carter that there was no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe and never would be under his administration. Here, though, Ford rallies and just barely beats Carter in the election.
Greenfield's fun at history's expense provides for some great stories: for instance, after his aggressive stance offends Kruschev, the latter decides to "put a hedgehog in Uncle Sam's pants" and forces Johnson to respond to Soviet missiles in Cuba. Later, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy confronts violent students protests in Chicago in 1968, and still later Ted Kennedy is forced to debate a man who adopts Kennedy's own brother's legacy and uses RFK's words against him. Greenfield throws in little allusions to how historical events truly played out -- both during this period and beyond. Newly-minted congressman Al Gore Jr. vows to seek a constitutional amendment that will ensure the winner of the popular vote is declared president, after a member of his own party manages to win the popular vote but lose in the electoral college: Richard Nixon grumbles that he needs a 'fair and balanced' news network that will cut him some slack; and a young Dick Cheney grumbles that "next, those bastards will be trying to privatize social security!". The book ends with a particularly humorous allusion, one that shows how ludicrously history can sometimes repeat itself.
While the author is more unkind than not to Nixon and Reagan, his bias is toward the centrist politics of Robert Kennedy rather than traditional progressivism as espoused by McGovern or Humprey. The Kennedy clan has a central role in the book: RFK's presidential campaign is its core, and the other two scenarios draw heavily on the Kennedy influence. The scenarios featured are stirringly plausible, though generally the range of the scenarios is limited. I wanted to see him explore how the space race might have unfolded with LBJ at the head, but there's no mention of it. This is part understandable, because history becomes increasingly more predictable as its scale broadens: while someone could write a book on how the early assassination of JFK altered the entire latter half of the 20th century, Greenfield doesn't -- ostensibly because there would be too many variables to deal with. He keeps the range of his scenarios small to limit the effects of chaos.
Greenfield also works in historical ripple effects into his narrative: in a world where Watergate never happens, Bob Woodward leaves the Washington Post to become a lawyer, and MASH fails after Vietnam ends on a less-than-agreeable note. Greenfield is a fine storyteller, but his flawless integration of real-life speeches into a completely different historical retelling impressed me the most. Dialogue abounds, but most of it -- Greenfield says -- is taken from the official Oval Office recordings that the various presidents kept. He devotes several dozen pages at the end of the book to explain how he drew from history to make the changes he did, which is always commendable when writing alternate history or historical fiction.
In the end, a fun romp through two decades of American politics that will especially appeal to those who feel the promise of America was shortchanged by acts of violence and like seeing Richard Nixon lose elections (repeatedly).
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Enjoyable and clever, but thin where it matters
By Patrick A. Hayden
Political Analyst Jeff Greenfield's latest book "Then Everything Changed" takes on the field of alternative history, not so much as a novel, but as an alternate "Making of the President" for three Presidents: Lyndon Johnson becomes President in 1960 when a lone nut blows up John Kennedy one month before he is inaugurated; RFK survives the Ambassador Hotel in 1968 and goes up against Nixon for the Presidency; and Gerald Ford manages to eek out a victory over Jimmy Carter in 1976, leading to a Ronald Reagan-Gary Hart election in 1980.
I'm a big fan of alternate history, and having watched Greenfield talk about this book, he obviously is as well. The best alternative histories always turn on one single event going slightly differently, and for the first 2/3 of the book or so Greenfield paints a great "what might have been". The first story is probably the best. In the real world, there was a lone, John Birch type nut who was planning on blowing up JFK in December of 1960. In our world, he got close but never succeeded, but Greenfied's world he kills Kennedy and throws the nation into a Constitutional crisis. Greenfield deftly weaves the tale of a nation in mourning with the back-room politicians who are so stunned they are falling all over themselves to make sure that the right thing happens and is SEEN as happening, so that the country knows that it's government will continue. His description of Lyndon Johnson is spot on. The LBJ who was Master of the Senate comes through very clearly as he takes the reigns of a shattered nation after the Age of Camelot is snuffed out before it even begins.
The problem with the story, and indeed the book, is that Greenfield is so interested in setting up HOW his alternate history happens, that he loses focus when the campaigning ends and the governing begins. There is so much detail in the RFK election story that almost 3/4 of that story, which begins with RFK avoiding assassination by Sirhan Sirhan, deal with the business of RFK winning the election. And while it's fun to read about real world backroom dealings, in my opinion the strength of alternate history would come from how RFK would govern once elected. Greenfield describes it, but not with the minute detail of the campaign. I won't spoil what Greenfield describes as an RFK presidency, but I will say that I found his writing on that to be a combination of wish fulfillment and goofy historical callbacks in the way of people like George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and a weird caper at the Republican National Committee that promises to go somewhere interesting and then just stops.
Perhaps because Greenfield was only interested in getting his fictionalized President's elected (or placed into power), he didn't feel the need to put all that much into how they governed. The Ford story, by far the weakest, seems to exist just to set up a Reagan-Hart match up in 1980, and here Greenfield's writing is sloppy and his characters act more like he wants them to act then they would act, which was not as big a problem in the first two stories. And considering how much historical information is available about these figures, Greenfield's final story smacks entirely of wish fulfillment, and not of a real analysis of what might have been.
All in all I would give the book 3 and 1/2 stars. Political junkies will love the backroom politics, but fans of history may well balk when they look at how Greenfield re imagines world and domestic events.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Very interesting, though not always convincing
By Bookreporter
"If only." Those two words have the potential to lead to hours of discussion, conjecture, speculation and robust debate. For a political junkie such as Jeff Greenfield, those words have inspired a fascinating book. Greenfield, the senior political correspondent at CBS News and a veteran reporter at CNN and ABC, has an impressive political resume that includes stints with Robert Kennedy and New York Mayor John Lindsay. His knowledge of and love for politics is evident to any viewer of his regular television appearances.
Greenfield has selected three events from the late 20th century to form the speculative basis of his book. The first game-changing occurrence is an assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy. In December 1960, Richard Pavlick, a retired postal worker, drove a dynamite-loaded car to the Palm Beach, Florida vacation residence of the President-elect, but his plan was foiled by law enforcement. Greenfield speculates how history might have changed had Pavlick succeeded in exploding his device. A constitutional crisis would have resulted as the Electoral College had not yet voted for the President and Vice-President. In the skillful hands of Greenfield, the hypothetical history reads like actual reporting.
The saga of Richard Pavlick is unknown to many Americans. However, Sirhan Sirhan is recognized by almost all and remains in the news today. This past week, California authorities denied Sirhan parole for the June 1968 killing of Robert Kennedy. THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED speculates on how history might have been different had the murder never occurred. The result, according to Greenfield, is the presidency of Robert Kennedy. In his description of the Kennedy presidency, Greenfield's admiration for the New York Senator is clear. Not surprisingly, in Greenfield's view, the Vietnam War comes to an early conclusion. He is one of many who fervently believe that both JFK and RFK would have dealt with the war in a far different fashion than Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. This theory finds no factual support in history. Disagreement with Greenfield on this point, however, does not detract from his ability to fascinate readers with his ideas.
In the third section, Greenfield begins to push the envelope in a somewhat perplexing manner. The basis for this part of the book is that President Gerald Ford snatches victory from the jaws of defeat in his 1976 election battle with Jimmy Carter. Ford's verbal faux pas regarding Russian domination of Poland never occurs. His momentum continues for the remainder of the campaign, and he emerges victorious despite losing the popular vote. History does teach us that such an occurrence is very possible. Somehow, Ford convinces the Shah of Iran to leave office in the fashion of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. A moderate government comes to power in Iran, and the Middle East is a more stable region.
Beyond this bit of historical legerdemain, Greenfield has quite a bit more domestic political speculation for the 1980 he has created. The presidency is a campaign between Gary Hart and Ronald Reagan. Hart turns the table on Reagan during the campaign by essentially becoming a younger version of the Great Communicator. It is interesting reading but not very believable.
Throughout THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED, there are wonderful references to changes in the historical landscape and what might have been. Readers will need to pay attention because the depth of their own political knowledge will determine their ability to recognize many of Greenfield's historical bon mots. This is a book that requires close attention; gratefully, its style and readability make the effort an easy chore.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman
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