{"title":"Marvin Kalb Harvard Professor Emeritus; Now Senior Adviser To Pulitzer Center; Former N","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"haunting-legacy-book-marvin-kalb-9780815723899","title":"Haunting Legacy","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe United States had never lost a war—that is, until 1975, when it was forced to flee Saigon in humiliation after losing to what Lyndon Johnson called a \"raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country.\" The legacy of this first defeat has haunted every president since, especially on the decision of whether to put \"boots on the ground\" and commit troops to war.\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eHaunting Legacy\u003c\/i\u003e, the father-daughter journalist team of Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb presents a compelling, accessible, and hugely important history of presidential decisionmaking on one crucial issue: in light of the Vietnam debacle, under what circumstances should the United States go to war?\u003cbr\u003eThe sobering lesson of Vietnam is that the United States is not invincible—it can lose a war—and thus it must be more discriminating about the use of American power. Every president has faced the ghosts of Vietnam in his own way, though each has been wary of being sucked into another unpopular war. Ford (during the \u003ci\u003eMayaguez\u003c\/i\u003e crisis) and both Bushes (Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan) deployed massive force, as if to say, \"Vietnam, be damned.\" On the other hand, Carter, Clinton, and Reagan (to the surprise of many) acted with extreme caution, mindful of the Vietnam experience. Obama has also wrestled with the Vietnam legacy, using doses of American firepower in Libya while still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.\u003cbr\u003eThe authors spent five years interviewing hundreds of officials from every post war administration and conducting extensive research in presidential libraries and archives, and they've produced insight and information never before published. Equal parts taut history, revealing biography, and cautionary tale, \u003ci\u003eHaunting Legacy\u003c\/i\u003e is must reading for anyone trying to understand the power of the past to influence war-and-peace decisions of the present, and of the future.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50299761295633,"sku":"CIN081572389XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368256246033,"sku":"CIN081572389XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51687393558801,"sku":"NIN9780815723899","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52453248925969,"sku":"NLS9780815723899","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081572389X.jpg?v=1750883095"},{"product_id":"year-i-was-peter-the-great-book-marvin-kalb-9780815731610","title":"The Year I Was Peter the Great","description":"\"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA chronicle of the year that changed Soviet Russia—and molded the future path of one of America's pre-eminent diplomatic correspondents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e1956 was an extraordinary year in modern Russian history. It was called “the year of the thaw”—a time when Stalin's dark legacy of dictatorship died in February only to be reborn later that December. This historic arc from rising hope to crushing despair opened with a speech by Nikita Khrushchev, then the unpredictable leader of the Soviet Union. He astounded everyone by denouncing the one figure who, up to that time, had been hailed as a “genius,” a wizard of communism—Josef Stalin himself. Now, suddenly, this once unassailable god was being portrayed as a “madman” whose idiosyncratic rule had seriously undermined communism and endangered the Soviet state.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis amazing switch from hero to villain lifted a heavy overcoat of fear from the backs of ordinary Russians. It also quickly led to anti-communist uprisings in Eastern Europe, none more bloody and challenging than the one in Hungary, which Soviet troops crushed at year's end.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMarvin Kalb, then a young diplomatic attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, observed this tumultuous year that foretold the end of Soviet communism three decades later. Fluent in Russian, a doctoral candidate at Harvard, he went where few other foreigners would dare go, listening to Russian students secretly attack communism and threaten rebellion against the Soviet system, traveling from one end of a changing country to the other and, thanks to his diplomatic position, meeting and talking with Khrushchev, who playfully nicknamed him Peter the Great.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this, his fifteenth book, Kalb writes a fascinating eyewitness account of a superpower in upheaval and of a people yearning for an end to dictatorship.\u003c\/p\u003e\"","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363548434705,"sku":"CIN0815731612G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51074170618129,"sku":"CIN0815731612VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52271310766353,"sku":"GOR014502125","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0815731612.jpg?v=1750849397"},{"product_id":"road-to-war-book-marvin-kalb-9780815724933","title":"The Road to War","description":"\u003cp\u003eNot since Pearl Harbor has an American president gone to Congress to request a declaration of war. Nevertheless, since then, one president after another, from Truman to Obama, has ordered American troops into wars all over the world. From Korea to Vietnam, Panama to Grenada, Lebanon to Bosnia, Afghanistan to Iraq--why have presidents sidestepped declarations of war? Marvin Kalb, former chief diplomatic correspondent for CBS and NBC News, explores this key question in his thirteenth book about the presidency and U.S. foreign policy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInstead of a declaration of war, presidents have justified their war-making powers by citing commitments, private and public, made by former presidents. Many of these commitments have been honored, but some betrayed. Surprisingly, given the tight U.S.-Israeli relationship, Israeli leaders feel that at times they have been betrayed by American presidents. Is it time for a negotiated defense treaty between the United States and Israel as a way of substituting for a string of secret presidential commitments?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom Israel to Vietnam, presidential commitments have proven to be tricky and dangerous. For example, one president after another committed the United States to the defense of South Vietnam, often without explanation. Over the years, these commitments mushroomed into national policy, leading to a war costing 58,000 American lives. Few in Congress or the media chose to question the war's provenance or legitimacy, until it was too late. No president saw the need for a declaration of war, considering one to be old-fashioned.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe word of a president can morph into a national commitment. It can become the functional equivalent of a declaration of war. Therefore, whenever a president commitsthe United States to a policy or course of action with, or increasingly without, congressional approval, watch out--the White House may be setting the nation on a road toward war.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Road to War\u003c\/i\u003e was a 2013 \u003ci\u003eForeword Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e honorable mention in the subject of War \u0026amp; Military.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368292913425,"sku":"CIN0815724934G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B071NSD732.jpg?v=1750883095"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-marvin-kalb-harvard-professor-emeritus-now-senior-adviser-to-pulitzer-center-former-n.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}