Author: Thomas ParrishPublisher: Harper Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780061357947
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
To Keep the British Isles Afloat
Author: Thomas ParrishPublisher: Harper Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780061357947
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
To Keep the British Isles Afloat
Author: Thomas ParrishPublisher: Smithsonian
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Discusses the emissaries sent by President Roosevelt to Britain in early 1941 while attempting to assess Winston Churchill's drinking habits and Britain's ability to resist Nazi Germany, covering the personalities and exploits of individuals such as Harry Hopkins and W. Averill Harriman.
To Keep the British Isles Afloat
Author: Thomas ParrishPublisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061910198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
“Thomas Parrish’s account of Anglo-American relations in 1941 is a carefully researched and deftly written slice of history showing FDR’s hidden hand at work. It is a lesson on the virtues of diplomacy.” — Ted Morgan, author of CHURCHILL Parrish’s book brings Hopkins and Harriman vividly to life--each was indeed a character, and the author’s perception of FDR’s thinking is exceptionally sensitive. For historians most useful. For the rest of us a very good read, a page turner for me. — Curtis Roosevelt, author of TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN: Growing Up in the Shadow of my Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor “A vivid portrait of crucial maneuverings in the most crucial yet little-noted of years, Thomas Parrish’s new book...offers a fresh look at how Churchill’s Britain survived while Roosevelt’s America moved ever so slowly toward forming what became the Grand Alliance.” — Jon Meacham, author of FRANKLIN AND WINSTON “In an engaging, and authoritative voice, Thomas Parrish vividly depicts Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman, and delineates their crucial role in saving Great Britain and, thus, America during the early part of World War II. This book shines a new light on Franklin Roosevelt and his partnership with Winston Churchill” — Will Swift, author of THE KENNEDYS AMIDST THE GATHERING STORM “Plays a valuable role in highlighting an often overlooked period of the Second World War, after the Battle of Britain but before Pearl Harbor, when President Roosevelt struggled to find and implement a policy of all possible material aid and support short of American military involvement and war. — Alan Packwood, Director, The Churchill Archives Centre “Parrish is a skilled writer, adept at conveying an authentic sense of the prevailing atmosphere...1941 is the compelling story here, now illuminated by this account of the successful efforts of two pathfinding American statesmen to help bring the liberal democracies together.” — Fraser Harbutt, Department of History, Emory University, author of The Iron Curtain Parrish, the author of several books about World War II, uses Clare Booth to back into his thesis that a sleepy, isolationist America needed to be roused, and that Roosevelt relied on two remarkable men – Hopkins and Harriman – to help sound the alarm and secure aid for Britain. — New York Times Book Review
Churchill, Roosevelt & Company
Author: Lewis E. LehrmanPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811765474
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
During World War II the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt’s grins and Winston Churchill’s victory signs, the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the two nations. Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis Lehrman explains how the Anglo-American alliance worked--and occasionally did not work--by presenting portraits and case studies of the men who worked the back channels and back rooms, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s agendas while also pursuing their own and thwarting others’. This was the domain of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with his boss; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill, who had the difficult task, not always well performed, of managing their subordinates and who frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves. Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman’s book reveals the personal diplomacy at the core of the Anglo-American alliance.
Floating Islands
Author: Richard J. HeggenPublisher: Richard Heggen
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1227
Book Description
Floating Islands in science, history, the arts and any number of sightings elsewhere
Rendezvous with Destiny
Author: Michael FullilovePublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101617829
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494
Book Description
The remarkable untold story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the five extraordinary men he used to pull America into World War II In the dark days between Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent five remarkable men on dramatic and dangerous missions to Europe. The missions were highly unorthodox and they confounded and infuriated diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. Their importance is little understood to this day. In fact, they were crucial to the course of the Second World War. The envoys were magnificent, unforgettable characters. First off the mark was Sumner Welles, the chilly, patrician under secretary of state, later ruined by his sexual misdemeanors, who was dispatched by FDR on a tour of European capitals in the spring of 1940. In summer of that year, after the fall of France, William “Wild Bill” Donovan—war hero and future spymaster—visited a lonely United Kingdom at the president’s behest to determine whether she could hold out against the Nazis. Donovan’s report helped convince FDR that Britain was worth backing. After he won an unprecedented third term in November 1940, Roosevelt threw a lifeline to the United Kingdom in the form of Lend-Lease and dispatched three men to help secure it. Harry Hopkins, the frail social worker and presidential confidant, was sent to explain Lend-Lease to Winston Churchill. Averell Harriman, a handsome, ambitious railroad heir, served as FDR’s man in London, expediting Lend-Lease aid and romancing Churchill’s daughter-in-law. Roosevelt even put to work his rumpled, charismatic opponent in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie, whose visit lifted British morale and won wary Americans over to the cause. Finally, in the aftermath of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Hopkins returned to London to confer with Churchill and traveled to Moscow to meet with Joseph Stalin. This final mission gave Roosevelt the confidence to bet on the Soviet Union. The envoys’ missions took them into the middle of the war and exposed them to the leading figures of the age. Taken together, they plot the arc of America’s trans¬formation from a divided and hesitant middle power into the global leader. At the center of everything, of course, was FDR himself, who moved his envoys around the globe with skill and élan. We often think of Harry S. Truman, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and George F. Kennan as the authors of America’s global primacy in the second half of the twentieth century. But all their achievements were enabled by the earlier work of Roosevelt and his representatives, who took the United States into the war and, by defeating domestic isolationists and foreign enemies, into the world. In these two years, America turned. FDR and his envoys were responsible for the turn. Drawing on vast archival research, Rendezvous with Destiny is narrative history at its most delightful, stirring, and important.
Historical Dictionary of World War II
Author: Anne Sharp WellsPublisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810879441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 567
Book Description
This dictionary covers the complex and costly conflict that began when Germany, ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, invaded neighboring Poland on 1 September 1939; and concluded when Germany surrendered on 7–9 May 1945, leaving much of the European continent in ruins and its population devastated. The war against Germany, Italy, and the other European Axis members was fought primarily in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, East and North Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean. The Axis powers were defeated by the Allies, led by the “Grand Alliance” of Great Britain, the United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Historical Dictionary of World War II: The War against Germany and Italy relates the history of this war through a chronology, an introductory essay, maps and photos, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries on the countries and geographical areas involved in the war, as well as the nations remaining neutral; wartime alliances and conferences; significant civilian and military leaders; and major ground, naval, and air operations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about World War II.
Churchill and Orwell
Author: Thomas E. RicksPublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143110888
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940's to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin. Churchill and Orwell is a perfect gift for the holidays!
Clementine
Author: Sonia PurnellPublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143128914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 481
Book Description
“Engrossing…the first formal biography of a woman who has heretofore been relegated to the sidelines.”–The New York Times From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Woman of No Importance, a long overdue tribute to the extraordinary woman who was Winston Churchill’s closest confidante, fiercest critic and shrewdest advisor that captures the intimate dynamic of one of history’s most fateful marriages. Late in life, Winston Churchill claimed that victory in the Second World War would have been “impossible” without the woman who stood by his side for fifty-seven turbulent years. Why, then, do we know so little about her? In this landmark biography, a finalist for the Plutarch prize, Sonia Purnell finally gives Clementine Churchill her due. Born into impecunious aristocracy, the young Clementine Hozier was the target of cruel snobbery. Many wondered why Winston married her, when the prime minister’s daughter was desperate for his attention. Yet their marriage proved to be an exceptional partnership. "You know,"Winston confided to FDR, "I tell Clemmie everything." Through the ups and downs of his tumultuous career, in the tense days when he stood against Chamberlain and the many months when he helped inspire his fellow countrymen and women to keep strong and carry on, Clementine made her husband’s career her mission, at the expense of her family, her health and, fatefully, of her children. Any real consideration of Winston Churchill is incomplete without an understanding of their relationship. Clementine is both the first real biography of this remarkable woman and a fascinating look inside their private world. "Sonia Purnell has at long last given Clementine Churchill the biography she deserves. Sensitive yet clear-eyed, Clementine tells the fascinating story of a complex woman struggling to maintain her own identity while serving as the conscience and principal adviser to one of the most important figures in history. I was enthralled all the way through." –Lynne Olson, bestselling author of Citizens of London
Wealth of an Empire
Author: Robert SwitkyPublisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612344976
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
Wealth of an Empire tells the dramatic true story of a top-secret mission that changed the course of World War II: Great BritainÆs shipment of virtually its entire treasury across the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic to safety in the United States and Canada. Had the Germans captured or sunk the treasure-laden ships, the war could have been lost more than eighteen months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The British government authorized this immensely risky and long-running operation not only because of the obvious danger that GermanyÆs rising militancy posed but also becaus.