I've seen the elephant

Sample

Herbert S. Parmet

This is the most comprehensive biography of John F. Kennedy ever undertaken. It centers on the his relationship to his awesome and powerful family- dominated by the one man in the United States both determined to place a son in the White House and capable of doing it. Combining vivid personal glimpses with insights into the political currents of the times, the author renders in fascinating and fully human terms Jack Kennedy's lifelong struggle to live up to his father's unbending expectations. There is much to this book that is new: It tells for the first time the full story of the grave illness that plagued Kennedy all his life, and of his desperate fight to overcome and then to conceal it. It brings to light the more shadowy of his celebrated affairs: the love for the suspected "Nazi agent" that resulted in his hurried transfer to the South Pacific during World War II, from which he returned a hero. It reveals the truth about his controversial friendship with Senator Joe McCarthy and it explores his peculiar relationship with Richard Nixon, whom he regarded as a rival but never an enemy. It also reconstructs the political machinations that led to Kennedy's election to the House and then to the Senate, and illuminates his complex relationship with the woman who was to become more famous as his widow than she was as his wife. -- Publisher description.

Sample

Ian Kershaw

The climax and conclusion of one of the best-selling biographies of our time. In this volume, Ian Kershaw introduces Adolf Hitler at the apex of his power, idolized by millions of Germans for bringing the nation out of economic catastrophe. The Nazi party, the armed forces, the industrial cartels, and the civil servants are all "working towards the Führer." Meanwhile, Hitler is poised to realize his Mephistophelean vision : the subjugation of Europe under the Thousand Year Reich and, in the process, the annihilation of the Jews. For three years, Hitler and his relentless armies pluge the European continent into a bloodbath, as German soldiers, accompanied by fanatical SS units, slaughter conquered troops and civilians alike. Then, as Allied might prevails, Kershaw reveals a Hitler transformed from invincible warlord to desperate gambler, ultimately bringing destruction to his country and ending his life in a bunker under the ruins of Berlin. This book is based on immense research, including the use of many previously untapped sources. - Publisher.

Sample

Yagami Kazuo

"The blame for a country's mistakes often falls on its leaders. In some cases, however, a leader's greatest mistake is to promote the mistaken goals of his people. Was this the case in World War II Japan? This book considers that question in the story of Japanese prime minister Konoe Fumimaro, who served as Japan's prime minister during one of the most difficult periods of the country's history. The author explores the general mood of 1930s Japan and traces Konoe's rise through the political ranks, including his first term as prime minister, his decision to step down, and his eventual comeback."--Jacket.

Sample

Lev Razgon

Lev Razgon became famous overnight when his memoirs first appeared in Russia in 1988. They were a sensation both due to his angle of vision - Razgon was living among the Party elites as the Stalinist terror of 1937 began - as well as to his sophisticated understanding of both his country and his century. His remarkably long life took him from the shtetl and a family which had been unlucky with the authorities for many generations, to Moscow where he was a Communist journalist and writer, to 17 years in labor camps (a fate shared by both his wives). When he finally returned to Moscow for good, he went back to writing books for young adults and worked in secret on these memoirs. The last man alive to have actually attended and survived the Communist Party Congress of 1934 - most of those attending were dead within three years - Razgon brilliantly conveys the everyday atmosphere of a Soviet world of privilege about to be destroyed. Stalin had given secret orders that the families and friends of the powerful be decimated as a lesson in terror, a preemptive strike against any thoughts of a coup. In this book the personalities and stories which shaped Razgon's existence before and after his seventeen years in the camps are emphasized. Razgon's journalistic curiosity and interest in history as well as individuals led him in unusual directions. Much here is new: the characters and fates of the jailers; the camp lives of the wives of the Soviet elite, imprisoned as hostages to control their powerful husbands; and the frustration of formerly high-ranking military men, forgotten prisoners of the gulag as they see that World War II is approaching.