Preface : a different angle on the civil rights movement -- Introduction : stirrings, 1865-1954 -- Montgomery, 1955-1956 : besieging a city -- Nashville, 1960 : developing a nonviolent cadre -- The Freedom Rides, 1961 : a raid behind enemy lines -- The Albany movement, 1961-1962 : stymied by an adaptive adversary -- Ole Miss, 1962 : a racial confrontation that lacked movement input -- Early Birmingham, Spring 1963 : putting children on the front lines -- The March on Washington, mid-1963 : taking the national stage -- Later Birmingham, Fall 1963 : counter-escalation against children -- Oxford, Ohio, June 1964 : SNCC prepares to assault a state -- The Battle of Mississippi, July and August 1964 : Freedom Summer -- Selma, 1965 : victory-- and factionalization -- Chicago, 1966 : a bridge too far -- Memphis, 1968 : the costs of it all -- Epilogue: the good war today
Chronology -- Prologue: What is America? -- The power of colonial classicism -- Washington studies how to rise in colonial society -- John Adams aims to become an American Cicero -- Jefferson blooms at William & Mary -- Madison breaks away to Princeton -- Adams and the fuse of rebellion -- Jefferson's declaration of the "American mind" -- Washington: the noblest Roman of them all -- The war strains the classical model -- From a difficult war to an uneasy peace -- Madison and the Constitution: balancing vice with vice -- The Classical vision smashes into American reality -- The revolution of 1800: the people, not the plebes -- The end of American classicism -- Epilogue: What we can do -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix: The Declaration of Independence.
"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks, a dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, with a focus on the pivotal years from the mid-1930s through the 1940s, when their farsighted vision and inspired action in the face of the threat of fascism and communism helped preserve democracy for the world. 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. 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'sto 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 ...
It is striking that, more than a decade after America's September wars began, the US military has not conducted a probing review of what it did wrong in handling the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to do better next time. Even as the Vietnam War wound down, the US Army took a hard look at the problems of its officer corps. No such studies appear to be under way now. Seeing that gap, the editors of Foreign Policy decided to take matters into their own hands. In mid-January, they convened a diverse group: a core of military officers complemented by others with firsthand experience running the wars -- as policymakers at the Pentagon, on the staff of the National Security Council, in US intelligence, at Central Command, and in the Iraqi military -- and rounded off with two journalists who have lived in Iraq or Afghanistan and written books on these conflicts. Adapted from the source document.
Enthält Rezension von: Ricks, Thomas: The gamble: general David Petraeus and the American military adventure in Iraq, 2006-2009. - New York/N.Y. : Penguin, 2009. - 400 S. - ISBN 978-1-59420-197-4
