Mark J. White - Böcker

Leading Kennedy scholars along with a group of younger historians have mined recently declassified documentation in order to reexamine many of the key issues surrounding JFK's time in the White House: Vietnam, Cuban missile crisis, Berlin crisis, space race, and others. Rejecting the idolatry and bitterness evident in so many previous works on JFK, this study adopts an evenhanded, eclectic approach. The result is a less caricatured, more compelling view of the Kennedy presidency.

The shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 propelled the memory of the slain president to a revered status. Naturally enough, the public came to terms with the tragedy in Dallas by investing the chief executive's life with Lincolnesque significance--a moral importance transcending politics. Traditionally, historians have accentuated either the positive "Camelot" or the negative "counter-Camelot" view of JFK. Measured appreciation became adulation and criticism evolved into vilification. Bringing together leading Kennedy scholars with a group of younger historians, Mark J. White demonstrates that both versions of JFK are unsatisfying caricatures, lacking subtlety and nuance. Using recently declassified documents, Kennedy examines many of the key issues surrounding the president's time in the White House: Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin issue, the space race, relations with de Gaulle, and trade policy. Rejecting the idolatry and bitterness evident in so many previous works on JFK, the volume presents a compelling reappraisal of the Kennedy presidency.

This book tells the story of both the ancient humans who made handaxes and the thoughts and ideas of scholars who have spent their lives trying to understand them. Beginning with the earliest known finds, this volume provides a linear and thematic account of the history of the Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic period, covering major discoveries, interpretations and debates worldwide; a story that takes us from the embers of the Great Fire of London to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It offers a comprehensive and unique history of archaeological theory and interpretation, seeking to explain how we know what we know about the deep past, and how ideas about it have changed over time, reflecting both scientific and societal change. At its heart lies the quest for an answer to a most curious and sometimes beautiful tool ever made – the handaxe. While focused on the Earlier Palaeolithic period, the book provides a readable account of how ideas about the prehistoric past generally were formed and altered, showing how the wider discipline came to be dominated by a succession of different theoretical ‘paradigms’, each seeking different answers from the same data set. Serving a dual purpose as a historical narrative and as a reference source, this book will be of interest to all students and researchers interested in deep human prehistory and evolution, archaeological theory and the history of archaeology.

This book tells the story of both the ancient humans who made handaxes and the thoughts and ideas of scholars who have spent their lives trying to understand them. Beginning with the earliest known finds, this volume provides a linear and thematic account of the history of the Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic period, covering major discoveries, interpretations and debates worldwide; a story that takes us from the embers of the Great Fire of London to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It offers a comprehensive and unique history of archaeological theory and interpretation, seeking to explain how we know what we know about the deep past, and how ideas about it have changed over time, reflecting both scientific and societal change. At its heart lies the quest for an answer to a most curious and sometimes beautiful tool ever made – the handaxe. While focused on the Earlier Palaeolithic period, the book provides a readable account of how ideas about the prehistoric past generally were formed and altered, showing how the wider discipline came to be dominated by a succession of different theoretical ‘paradigms’, each seeking different answers from the same data set. Serving a dual purpose as a historical narrative and as a reference source, this book will be of interest to all students and researchers interested in deep human prehistory and evolution, archaeological theory and the history of archaeology.

For many years historians of the Cuban missile crisis have concentrated on those thirteen days in October 1962 when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. Mark White’s study adds an equally intense scrutiny of the causes and consequences of the crisis. Missiles in Cuba is based on up-to-date scholarship as well as Mr. White’s own findings in National Security Archive materials, Kennedy Library tapes of ExComm meetings, and correspondence between Soviet officials in Washington and Havana—all newly released. His more rounded picture gives us a much clearer understanding of the policy strategies pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union (and, to a lesser extent, Cuba) that brought on the crisis. His almost hour-by-hour account of the confrontation itself also destroys some venerable myths, such as the unique initiatives attributed to Robert Kennedy. And his assessment of the consequences of the crisis points to salutary effects on Soviet-American relation and on U.S. nuclear defense strategy, but questionable influences on Soviet defense spending and on Washington’s perception of its talents for "crisis management," later tested in Vietnam.