D - Misc books/video related to JFK Years

The first history of the private relationships among modern American presidents - their backroom deals, rescue missions, secret alliances and enduring rivalries.
The President Club, established at Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration by Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, is a complicated place : its members are bound forever by the experience at the Oval Office and yet are eternal rivals for history's favor. Among their secrets : Ho Jack Kennedy tried to blame Ike for the Bay of Pigs. How Ike quietly helped Reagan win his first race in 1966. Ho Richard Nixon conspired with Lyndon Johnson to get elected and then betrayed him. How Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter turned a deep enmity into an alliance. The letter from Nixon that Bill Clinton rereads every year. The unspoken pact between a father and a son named Bush. And the roots of the rivalry between Clinton and Barack Obama.
Journalists and presidential historians Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy offer a new tool to understand the presidency by exploring the club as a hidden instrument of power that has changed the course of history.

An award-winning presidential historian offers an authoritative account of American presidents' attacks on our freedom of the press.
Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House beat has believed with equal fervency that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Our first president, George Washington, was also the first to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, although he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to actively manage the stable of reporters who followed him, doling out information, steering coverage, and squashing stories that interfered with his agenda. It was a strategy that galvanized TR’s public support, but the lesson was lost on Woodrow Wilson, who never accepted reporters into his inner circle. Franklin Roosevelt transformed media relations forever, holding more than a thousand presidential press conferences and harnessing the new power of radio, at times bypassing the press altogether. John F. Kennedy excelled on television and charmed reporters to hide his personal life, while Richard Nixon was the first to cast the press as a public enemy. From the days of newsprint and pamphlets to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, each president has harnessed the media, whether intentional or not, to imprint his own character on the office.

In this remarkable new history, acclaimed scholar Harold Holzer examines the dual rise of the American presidency and the media that shaped it. From Washington to Trump, he chronicles the disputes and distrust between these core institutions that define the United States of America, revealing that the essence of their confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation.

President-elect Kennedy spends November 18, 1960, alone at his parents' home on Palm Beach. He meets Enid, an attractive painter, by the water. The chance encounter triggers his puzzling decision to return to Florida immediately after Thanksgiving, leaving his heavily pregnant wife Jacqueline behind. Enid becomes the President's best kept secret and, unbeknown to him, much more than that. This presidency is strewn with dark mysteries from the demise of Marilyn Monroe to that of JFK himself; passing by the sidelining of lover Judith Exner, the forced repatriation of german model Ellen Rometsch, the wrath of Sinatra, the motives of Mafia bosses Giancana and Trafficante, the ominous warning to Press Secretary Salinger and the political survival of Edgar Hoover. Because Enid is not whom she seems. So who is this intelligent redhead, with gazelle eyes, who loves and dreams in the shadow of a president? Is she acting for others? If she is genuinely enamoured with JFK, she doesn't save him from the gun. And why does Mary Meyer, JFK's lifelong friend, meet the same fate thereafter? Masterly crafted around historical accounts, The Quiet Companion captures the reader in a fascinating web of intrigue until the last breathtaking page.

The Red Diaries was released as a four-issue series with each issue running 48 pages, about the Kennedy / Mob / CIA and other connections with Marilyn.
Written by Gary Reed, it featured artwork from Chris Jones, Laurence Campbell, Larry Shuput, and Ken Meyer, Jr. In addition to the story line, there is background information that will provide a wider view on the story line. These short segments include a history of the CIA, the Kennedy family, the formal reports on the Kennedy Assassination, Monroe's death, and more.

A two-disc set containing the important and famous speeches of John F.Kennedy, Martin Luther King,Jr, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
John F.Kennedy was dynamic, poised and relaxed at all times. The program focuses on Kennedy, the public orator and features every major address during his three years in the White House.
Martin Luther King Jr was perhaps the most inspirational speaker of all time. Follow his electrifying speeches from the early days as a young pastor in Montgomery to the great march on Washington, including the final prophetic speech in Memphis just days before his tragic assassination.

Jim Crow was not a regional sickness, it was a national cancer. Even at the high point of twentieth century liberalism in the North, Jim Crow racism hid in plain sight. Perpetuated by colorblind arguments about “cultures of poverty,” policies focused more on black criminality than black equality. Procedures that diverted resources in education, housing, and jobs away from poor black people turned ghettos and prisons into social pandemics. Americans in the North made this history. They tried to unmake it, too.
Liberalism, rather than lighting the way to vanquish the darkness of the Jim Crow North gave racism new and complex places to hide. The twelve original essays in this anthology unveil Jim Crow’s many strange careers in the North. They accomplish two goals: first, they show how the Jim Crow North worked as a system to maintain social, economic, and political inequality in the nation’s most liberal places; and second, they chronicle how activists worked to undo the legal, economic, and social inequities born of Northern Jim Crow policies, practices, and ideas.
The book ultimately dispels the myth that the South was the birthplace of American racism, and presents a compelling argument that American racism actually originated in the North.

Novel.
Stephen Hunter takes on one of the most shocking crimes in American history when his celebrated hero ex-Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger follows the smallest hint of a lead to its staggering conclusion...about the fateful third bullet that ended the life of President John F.Kennedy.

This book is an unparalleled volume of architectural photography revealing the majestic interiors - public and private - and breathtaking exterior of this America landmark building.
Briefly traces the history of the Capitol building, shows its entrances, porticoes, corridors, and chambers, and describes the work of the Congress

Shrouded in anonymity, protected by executive privilege, but with no legal or constitutional authority of their own, the 5,900 people in 125 offices collectively known as the White House staff assist the chief executive by shaping, focusing, and amplifying presidential policy. Why is the staff so large? How is it organized and what do those 125 offices actually do? In this sequel to his critically appraised 1988 book, Ring of Power, Bradley H. Patterson Jr.a veteran of three presidential administrationstakes us inside the closely guarded turf of the White House. In a straightforward narrative free of partisan or personal agendas, Patterson provides an encyclopedic description of the contemporary White House staff and its operations. He illustrates the gradual shift in power from the cabinet departments to the staff and, for the first time in presidential literature, presents an accounting for the total budget of the modern White House. White House staff members control everything from the monumental to the mundane. They prepare the president for summit conferences, but also specify who sits on Air Force One. They craft the language for the president to use on public occasionsfrom a State of the Union Address to such "Rose Garden rubbish" as the pre-Thanksgiving pardon for the First Turkey. The author provides an entertaining yet in-depth overview of these responsibilities. Patterson also illuminates the astounding degree to which presidents personally conduct American diplomacy and personally supervise U.S. military actions. The text is punctuated with comments by senior White House aides and by old Washington hands whose careers go back more than half a century. The book provides not only a comprehensive key to the offices and activities that make the White House work, but also the feeling of belonging to that exclusive membership inside the West Wing.

The Path to Power, Book One, reveals in extraordinary detail the genesis of the almost superhuman drive, energy, and urge to power that set LBJ apart. Chronicling the startling early emergence of Johnson’s political genius, it follows him from his Texas boyhood through the years of the Depression in the Texas hill Country to the triumph of his congressional debut in New Deal Washington, to his heartbreaking defeat in his first race for the Senate, and his attainment, nonetheless, of the national power for which he hungered.

We see in him, from earliest childhood, a fierce, unquenchable necessity to be first, to win, to dominate—coupled with a limitless capacity for hard, unceasing labor in the service of his own ambition. Caro shows us the big, gangling, awkward young Lyndon—raised in one of the country’s most desperately poor and isolated areas, his education mediocre at best, his pride stung by his father’s slide into failure and financial ruin—lunging for success, moving inexorably toward that ultimate “impossible” goal that he sets for himself years before any friend or enemy suspects what it may be.

We watch him, while still at college, instinctively (and ruthlessly) creating the beginnings of the political machine that was to serve him for three decades. We see him employing his extraordinary ability to mesmerize and manipulate powerful older men, to mesmerize (and sometimes almost enslave) useful subordinates. We see him carrying out, before his thirtieth year, his first great political inspiration: tapping-and becoming the political conduit for-the money and influence of the new oil men and contractors who were to grow with him to immense power. We follow, close up, the radical fluctuations of his relationships with the formidable “Mr. Sam” Raybum (who loved him like a son and whom he betrayed) and with FDR himself. And we follow the dramas of his emotional life-the intensities and complications of his relationships with his family, his contemporaries, his girls; his wooing and winning of the shy Lady Bird; his secret love affair, over many years, with the mistress of one of his most ardent and generous supporters . . .

Johnson driving his people to the point of exhausted tears, equally merciless with himself . . . Johnson bullying, cajoling, lying, yet inspiring an amazing loyalty . . . Johnson maneuvering to dethrone the unassailable old Jack Garner (then Vice President of the United States) as the New Deal’s “connection” in Texas, and seize the power himself . . . Johnson raging . . . Johnson hugging . . . Johnson bringing light and, indeed, life to the worn Hill Country farmers and their old-at-thirty wives via the district’s first electric lines.

We see him at once unscrupulous, admirable, treacherous, devoted. And we see the country that bred him: the harshness and “nauseating loneliness” of the rural life; the tragic panorama of the Depression; the sudden glow of hope at the dawn of the Age of Roosevelt. And always, in the foreground, on the move, LBJ.

Here is Lyndon Johnson—his Texas, his Washington, his America—in a book that brings us as close as we have ever been to a true perception of political genius and the American political process.
 

In Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro brings alive Lyndon Johnson in his wilderness years.

Here, Johnson’s almost mythic personality—part genius, part behemoth, at once hotly emotional and icily calculating—is seen at its most nakedly ambitious. This multifaceted book carries the President-to-be from the aftermath of his devastating defeat in his 1941 campaign for the Senate-the despair it engendered in him, and the grueling test of his spirit that followed as political doors slammed shut-through his service in World War II (and his artful embellishment of his record) to the foundation of his fortune (and the actual facts behind the myth he created about it).

The culminating drama—the explosive heart of the book—is Caro’s illumination, based on extraordinarily detailed investigation, of one of the great political mysteries of the century. Having immersed himself in Johnson’s life and world, Caro is able to reveal the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson was not believed capable of winning, which he “had to” win or face certain political death, and which he did win-by 87 votes, the “87 votes that changed history.”

Telling that epic story “in riveting and eye-opening detail,” Caro returns to the American consciousness a magnificent lost hero. He focuses closely not only on Johnson, whom we see harnessing every last particle of his strategic brilliance and energy, but on Johnson’s “unbeatable” opponent, the beloved former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, who embodied in his own life the myth of the cowboy knight and was himself a legend for his unfaltering integrity. And ultimately, as the political duel between the two men quickens—carrying with it all the confrontational and moral drama of the perfect Western—Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new—the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.
 

Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate.

At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done.

It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control.

Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875.

Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.

Hailed as 'the greatest biography of our era' (The Times) this is the fourth part of Robert Caro's multi-award-winning best-selling work on American President Lyndon Johnson.
The Passage of Power, 'the series' crowning volume' (Economist), spans the years 1958 to 1964, arguably the most crucial years in the life of Johnson and pivotal years for American history. This era saw some of the most frustrating moments of Johnson's career, but also some of his most triumphant. His battle with the Kennedy brothers over the 1960 Democratic nomination for president was a bitter one, and the ensuing years of Johnson's vice-presidency were marked with humiliation. But, thrust into power following the assassination of J. F. Kennedy, Johnson grasped the presidential role with unprecedented skill. Caro also provides a fresh perspective on Kennedy’s assassination from Johnson's viewpoint, and penetrates deep into what it was like for him to assume a position of such power at a time of national crisis.
The Passage of Power documents Johnson's extraordinary early presidency, forcing previously abandoned bills on the budget and civil rights through an uncooperative Congress and striving to achieve what he saw to be the highest standard of office.
In The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Caro shows a delicacy of touch and a profoundness of insight into the state of a nation under the hand of a political master. Collectively these volumes constitute a major history of America in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century.

Novel.
In a riveting novel rooted in one of American history's great "what if", Jim Lehrer tells the story of two men haunted by the events leading up to John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Italian book.
"Top Secret" is a program that aired on Retequattro. Dedicated to the darkest sides of the great events of our time, it was hosted by Claudio Brachino and the most interesting contents of the episodes have converged, with a more detailed analysis, in this book. The themes addressed are many, all linked by the common thread of mystery: the most recent theories and revelations on UFOs, the monsters that populate our imagination, such as dragons and vampires, but also real ones such as the vampire serial killer of Paris, a necrophiliac , blood drinker and murderer, or the Monster of Marcinelle, the pedophile Marc Dutroux, the premature and tragic death of Lady Diana...
Among the various topics addressed there are also the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the death of Marilyn Monroe.

President John F.Kennedy is quoted five times in this book.

Year-by-year highlights of World Events a they happened : 1960.
DVD of 1h 36m.

Year-by-year highlights of World Events a they happened : 1961-1963.
DVD of 1h 43m.

Italian version of the book "A world of secrets".
An assessment of U.S. intelligence gathering pinpoints its successes and failures and examines where improvements are needed based on an analysis of previously inaccessible material and personal interviews with leaders of government and the intelligence.
One chapter is dedicated to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 during the Kennedy Presidency.

At the heart of this provocative book lies the fundamental question: Does it matter who is President on issues of war and peace? The Vietnam War was one of the most catastrophic and bloody in living memory, and its lessons take on resonance in light of America's devastating involvement in Iraq. Tackling head-on the most controversial and debated "what if" in US Foreign policy, this unique work explores what President John F.Kennedy would have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated in 1963.

Few phrases garner as much attention as "We interrupt this broadcast...". Wherever we may happen to be , our lives stop for a moment, and we experience those few seconds of anxiety between the interruption and the actual announcement of what has happened. In words and images - and on two audio CDs- this book brings to life 43 famous and infamous moments that were announced  with those four chilling words, including the JFK assassination on Nov.22,1963.

In White House Ghosts, veteran Washington reporter Robert Schlesinger opens a fresh and revealing window on the modern presidency from FDR to George W. Bush. This is the first book to examine a crucial and often hidden role played by the men and women who help presidents find the words they hope will define their places in history.

Drawing on scores of interviews with White House scribes and on extensive archival research, Schlesinger weaves intimate, amusing, compelling stories that provide surprising insights into the personalities, quirks, egos, ambitions, and humor of these presidents as well as how well or not they understood the bully pulpit.

White House Ghosts traces the evolution of the presidential speechwriter's job from Raymond Moley under FDR through such luminaries as Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., under JFK, Jack Valenti and Richard Goodwin under LBJ, William Safire and Pat Buchanan under Nixon, Hendrik Hertzberg and James Fallows under Carter, and Peggy Noonan under Reagan, to the "Troika" of Michael Gerson, John McConnell, and Matthew Scully under George W. Bush.

It's a vintage 1962 book entitled, "Who's In Charge Here?" by Gerald Gardner. This book features the JFK  era at White House in a very humorous light. Cover features JFK speaking to former President Eisenhower, and Eisenhower says, "So the bathroom still leaks-" Every possible Kennedy-era personality is in the book, including Fidel Castro, Queen Elizabeth II, Caroline Kennedy and many more.

A whistleblower looks too deeply into a president’s assassination in this darkly satiric conspiracy thriller from the author of The Manchurian Candidate.

It has been more than a decade since the assassination of US President Timothy Kegan, who was gunned down while riding in a motorcade through the streets of Philadelphia. The “lone gunman” responsible was arrested and convicted, and the country has moved on.
President Kegan’s half-brother Nick tries to move on as well—until he overhears the deathbed confession of a man who claims to have been a second shooter. Suddenly Nick’s embroiled in a Kafkaesque conspiracy that stretches from Washington DC to Cuba and all the way into England’s Court of St. James. He’s surrounded by mobsters, oil magnates, crooked cops, religious leaders, CIA “spooks,” Hollywood celebrities, and international power brokers—including the renowned Washington hostess, fixer, and femme fatale, Lola Camonte—all of whom seem intent upon doing him in. And the closer Nick comes to the startling truth about the assassination, the less he really wants to know.
Winter Kills is an outrageously dark and funny take on the John F. Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy furor that followed it, from the master storyteller who brought you The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi’s Honor.