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When asked how they are doing, it's not unusual for people to reply, "Pretty good, under the circumstances." And yet, living "under the circumstances" can be a frustrating, unsatisfying, and even overwhelming existence. So many people feel trapped under the circumstances of life. But do the circumstances of life-whether they're good or bad-have to determine how life is lived?
Judy Hampton insists that Christians don't have to be trapped under the circumstances of life. She illustrates how God uses the circumstances of life both to bring His light into a dark world and to reveal areas in an individual's life that don't reflect His character. And He uses circumstances to conform His children into the image of His Son. With a blend of Scripture and personal anecdotes, Judy Hampton gives readers the tools to change their view of their circumstances from a purely human perspective to God's perspective. It's a change of view that allows readers to respond appropriately to the things life throws their way-living above the circumstances instead of under them.
When John F. Kennedy was shot, millions were left to wonder how America, and the world, would have been different had he lived to fulfill the enormous promise of his presidency. For many historians and political observers, what Kennedy would and would not have done in Vietnam has been a source of enduring controversy. Now, based on convincing new evidence--including a startling revelation about the Kennedy administration's involvement in the assassination of Premier Diem--Howard Jones argues that Kennedy intended to withdraw the great bulk of American soldiers and pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Vietnam. Drawing upon recently declassified hearings by the Church Committee on the U.S. role in assassinations, newly released tapes of Kennedy White House discussions, and interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and others from the president's inner circle, Jones shows that Kennedy firmly believed that the outcome of the war depended on the South Vietnamese. In the spring of 1962, he instructed Secretary of Defense McNamara to draft a withdrawal plan aimed at having all special military forces home by the end of 1965. The "Comprehensive Plan for South Vietnam" was ready for approval in early May 1963, but then the Buddhist revolt erupted and postponed the program. Convinced that the war was not winnable under Diem's leadership, President Kennedy made his most critical mistake--promoting a coup as a means for facilitating a U.S. withdrawal. In the cruelest of ironies, the coup resulted in Diem's death followed by a state of turmoil in Vietnam that further obstructed disengagement. Still, these events only confirmed Kennedy's view about South Vietnam's inability to win the war and therefore did not lessen his resolve to reduce the U.S. commitment. By the end of November, however, the president was dead and Lyndon Johnson began his campaign of escalation. Jones argues forcefully that if Kennedy had not been assassinated, his withdrawal plan would have spared the lives of 58,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese. Written with vivid immediacy, supported with authoritative research, Death of a Generation answers one of the most profoundly important questions left hanging in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's death.
REVIEW
Ch. 4, Secret War 5, Subterfuge 6, Seduction 7, Decent Veil This book has great chapter titles, and 80 pages of notes.
There are a lot of questions in this book are about death. While President Kennedy was alive, it was not obvious that Vietnam was going to be part of the world in which so many Americanswould die. The insignificance of the problem at the time Kennedy took office might be guessed from such assessments as, "Interrogations of captured Vietcong cadres showed them to be well trained and brought in, across the seventeenth parallel, or through Laos and Cambodia. The total Vietcong in central Vietnam had grown from a thousand at the end of 1959 to five times that number by mid-1961." (p. 102). President Kennedy had authorized an increase in American troops that jumped from hundreds to thousands as the years went by, but with little sign that, merely seven years after JFK took office, more than a thousand troops per week on each side might be losing their lives in Nam early in 1968.
As a professor in history with a year off from teaching, Howard Jones had the opportunity to examine documentary sources and the Oral History Interviews at presidential libraries, and he even talked to a few of the remaining participants. Daniel Ellsberg is not a major character in this book, though Jones talked to him on March 27, 2002, concerning a meeting in which President Kennedy asked Lansdale about getting rid of The Nhus, "But if that didn't work out--or I changed my mindand decided to get rid of Diem--would you be able to go along with that?" Lansdale ended up in a limousine with Robert McNamara after the meeting, where McNamara told him, "When he asks you to do something, you don't tell him you won't do it." (p. 365). Actually, the source of this story is a book by A. J. Langguth, a New York Times correspondent in South Vietnam who claimed "Ellsberg's unpublished memoir, Langguth asserted, contained this account of Lansdale's clandestine meeting with the president." (p. 365). "Ellsberg likewise considers the story valid. But in an interview of McNamara conducted by Langguth years afterward, the former secretary alleged that he did not recall the meeting." (pp. 365-366). I checked the index of SECRETS by Daniel Ellsberg, finally published in October, 2002, and found no mention of President Kennedy on the pages of the only entry for "Lansdale, Edward G.: McNamara's meeting with," though it included a page on which "high Vietnamese officials who met with General Lansdale regarded him warily but with awe because of his reputation as a kingmaker. They assumed he was there to pick the next Diem." By the time Ellsberg was on the Lansdale team, LBJ was president, Diem and Nhu were dead, and the Vietnamese could only hope that another government like Diem's would be better than a bunch of generals.
America clearly considered a coup against Diem at a time when it was trying to be as neutral as possible, because Diem could have asked American diplomats to leave Nam if he had any evidence that the Americans were actively engaging in plots against a government that it was supposed to be supporting. The index is good at sorting out who was involved, though it isn't until page 280 that Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a brigadier general in the Army Reserves who spent 1962 writing policy papers on Vietnam, was given the opportunity to become the American ambassador to Saigon. In the photo section, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's trip to Saigon on May 12, 1961, established that Frederick Nolting was ambassador then. President Kennedy is shown talking with Henry Cabot Lodge on August 15, 1963, just a few weeks before JFK's CBS television broadcast with Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963. As usual, "Lodge's appointment, the Kennedy administration insisted, ensured bipartisan support for its Vietnam policy. These statements were true, but they did not reflect reality. The White House believed that Nolting had become too close to Diem," (p. 281). The note supporting this information adds, "Nolting learned of his removal over radio while on vacation." (p. 501).
While this is a history of policy that led to the Vietnam war, there is little sense that any possibility, other than a result which might be considered a victory for American policy, was ever considered. The only use that the Vietnamese had for the Americans was for creating the illusion that somehow America could win a war there. By September 18, 1963, Lodge was trying to get Nhu to leave the country, and reporting back to Washington, "one feels sorry for him. He is wound up as tight as a wire. He appears to be a lost soul, a haunted man who is caught in a vicious circle. The Furies are after him." (p. 371).
This is history on an emotional level. I have no doubt that Jack Ruby pulled the trigger of the pistol that shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach, resulting in Oswald's death, and it might have been because of a cancer that would take the life of Jack Ruby before the end of the 1960s, when we had learned enough from Lenny Bruce to let just about anybody swear, if they felt like it. For President Kennedy to remain on good relations with the C.I.A., after news started coming in on how bad the situation in Nam really was, is like expecting Americans to believe that Ruby and Oswald were friends, or even knew each other. Oswald and Ruby do not appear in this book. For that side of the story, see OSWALD TALKED by La Fontaine. This book has no news on who took part in the JFK assassination, which is officially still more of a mystery than anything that happened in Nam.
Worried about her twin brother, Judith Callard follows the man responsible for her brother's position-Lord Penventon-into one of Lisbon's seedier districts. What she finds there not only inflames her jealousy, but places her life in grave danger...
REVIEW
Multiple layers and textures make for spectacular reading! Layer upon layer upon layer: characterization, plot, setting. Some books one reads (or attempts to, at least) seem always to bemissing one or more of these rather important elements. When you add in writing (and/or sometimes editing) skills-or the lack of them-finding a great book to read can be a task filled with mytery. Not so with the books of Sandra Heath, and in particular, her latest, Winter Dreams.
The story begins in Lisbon, Portugal during the Napoleonic wars, then travels to London and then to Cornwall. In addition to French spies and English espionage, there is a prima donna who could give Maria Callas lessons in the art of being one; brother/sister twins with a psychic connection; a ghost; an old love gone awry but come to life again-and a hero to die for.
This book has everything. Everything! It has mystery and atmosphere and adventure and a romance that transcends years and distances to reunite Judith Nicholls Callard with her first love, Daniel, Lord Penventon. Although marriage between the two had been long planned, the younger Judith had fallen for the practiced charm of another man, Robert Callard, only to be widowed when he fought a duel not quite a year before the opening of the story. She'd had no plans whatever to meet up with Daniel again, but had accompanied hertwin, Jamie, on his government assignment to Lisbon.
Daniel is known to have been consorting with the celebrated opera star, Madame Bella Barnardi, who has also caught the eye of Napoleon, along with those of seemingly every other man on the face of the earth! She is as volatile as dynamite, whether on- or off-stage, and what she wants, she will have. Currently, she wants Daniel, and lures him to her side (with the help of the British government) by offering secret information of a very personal nature about and from Bonaparte.
Bella blackmails the British government, which then blackmails Daniel into cooperating with the singer, entirely against his wishes. Finally, he is able to convince the new Foreign Secretary to assist in a plot to trick the diva into divulging her secrets, rendering her threats useless, and freeing Daniel to pursue his love, Judith. Except for one small detail.
Fearful of Bella's vengeful nature and several previous attempts on her life (both in Lisbon, onboard ship sailing back to England, and then again in London) Judith has taken herself off to Cornwall, and Daniel is unable to find her for several weeks.
The resolution is fast and furious-and eminently satisfactory-as Bella gets her comeuppance, leaving Daniel and Judith to live happily ever after in mysterious Cornwall. This is a book to be read and re-read, over and over again. Purely marvelous!
An exhilarating blend of past and present, of mystery and romance, and of love lost and found.
"I should not write this lest Charlotte come snooping, for he made me promise not to tell anyone of his whereabouts. And yet it is all so strange I am loath not to record it. I will mark it now, and maybe tomorrow awaken to find it only a mad dream anyhow, like all the rest..." --From the diary of Emily Bronte
Alex Hightower, an American professor, has always been fascinated by Emily Bronte and her brief, tragic life. But what were thesecrets she took with her to her grave? The answers begin in the village of Haworth, where Emily lived and died, as Alex delves into the past to unlock a hundred-and-fifty-year-old mystery.
Was Emily a lonely spinster of legend? Or a troubled, passionate woman who loved in secret? And who is Selena, the mysterious gypsy beauty Alex meets on Haworth's storm-tossed moors, who speaks of a family curse, and who knows more than she realizes about Emily's secrets?
REVIEW
A great read! The thought that Emily Bronte might have actually experienced some of the passion she wrote about in Wuthering Heights is intriguing. I enjoyed the romance between Alex and Selena and the breaking of the "gypsy curse". My only criticism would be the characterization of Alex's ex-girlfriend who I thought was too one-dimensional in her jealousy of Alex. Since she was supposed to be a Bronte scholar, I thought her reaction to the discovery of Emily's letter wasn't what I would have expected. I also thought that Alex's reaction to Selena's subsequent destruction of the letter was a bit too understanding.
