America and the World

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1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink (Da Capo), by Taylor Downing

The public was unaware of how close the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were to launching a nuclear war in 1983 that would have left millions dead, destroyed entire continents and perhaps the entire world. Taylor Downing accesses a trove of recently uncovered information and reconstructs a plausible picture of what almost happened amidst a potted history of the 20th century. Although Reagan was appalled at the thought of nuclear war, he drastically increased arms spending, stationed cruise missiles in Europe and was bellicose toward the Soviets in public. He increased paranoia in the Kremlin, as did his loose talk of a Star Wars defense system. The situation was only worsened by the fact that U.S. and Soviet leaders had little meaningful intelligence on each other. Downing’s take-away: “the aggressive and confrontational tone of an American president can provoke unintended consequences.”

Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles (W.W. Norton), by Fran Leadon

One of the world’s storied streets, Broadway began as a mud path through the heart of Dutch New Amsterdam and now stretches 13 miles up the spine of Manhattan. Fran Leadon’s Broadway is only incidentally about the theaters that are the avenue’s famous feature, but is, as the subtitle promises, a witty and informed history of New York City—a travelogue through the past. Leadon loves describing buildings still accounted for and those that have vanished by fire or the wrecker’s ball. Race and class were always at issue on Broadway, Leadon finds, and he makes the astute observation that the Manhattan we know today was made possible by two inventions: steel and the elevator.

The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947 (W.W. Norton), by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

As U.S. Army chief of staff, George Marshall was one of the architects of victory in World War II. A few years later he devised the Marshall Plan to fund the rebuilding of Western Europe’s shattered economies. But in between, for 13 months in 1945 through 1947, he had a mission less remembered for its lack of success: building a democratic China with a peace accord between two tyrants, the Communist Mao Zedong and his pro-Western enemy, Chiang Kai-shek. The dream never materialized and China descended into a civil war whose reverberations continue to be felt. In Daniel Kurtz-Phelan’s page-turning account of the great soldier-statesman’s impossible mission, Marshall loathed war even though he was good at it and planned for peace in a world now led by the U.S. China proved insurmountable. Despite encouraging words from both sides, neither wanted peace except on its terms and the U.S. lacked the force and resolve to impose a lasting settlement. The author is right to conclude that Marshall represented American leadership at its best: “strong, generous, bold.”

The Flying Tigers: The Untold Story of the American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan (Viking), by Sam Kleiner

Although the subtitle calls it an “untold story,” the legend of the Flying Tigers has been told many times already in books and even in Hollywood. The Untold Story’s assertion that Franklin D. Roosevelt offered secret encouragement to the squadron of American aviators flying under Chinese colors before Pearl Harbor is no surprise as the president was preparing for war a year before the Japanese attack, arming and encouraging potential allies against the Axis. Untold or not, Sam Klein tells a good story, especially when focused on the commander of the maverick American squadron, Col. Claire Chennault, an adventurer who should have been played in the Hollywood movie by Clark Gable.

James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era (University of Illinois Press), by Joseph Vogel

Fresh assessments are in order on James Baldwin, given the renewed attention he has recently received, and not only from the documentary I Am Not Your Negro. Joseph Vogel examines the under-acknowledged last decade and a half of Baldwin’s life when many black activists and white literary lions turned on him—partly from homophobia but mostly because Baldwin was too complex, too nuanced in his views to march easily under any banner. Vogel shows that he remained culturally engaged and provocative in the age of Reagan, crack and AIDS, “Always shifting and changing and searching,” in Baldwin’s own words. Too bad no one seemed to listen.

The Third Degree: The Triple Murder that Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice (Potomac Books), by Scott D. Seligman

Until the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1966 Miranda decision, American police didn’t caution suspects that anything they said could be used against them in court. But the case of Ziang Sung Wan, a Chinese citizen accused in 1919 of murdering three countrymen provided a precedent. The Washington D.C. police coerced a confession that was accepted by lower courts even after he repudiated it. Scott D. Seligman chronicles the case through Wan’s conviction, the failure of his first appeal and his freedom after the Supreme Court affirmed that only voluntary confessions were admissible in federal courts. It would take many decades before the principal was universally observed in state jurisdictions.

World War II at Sea: A Global History (Oxford University Press), by Craig L. Symonds

With World War II at Sea, Craig L. Symonds has written a hefty but readable tome for military and maritime history buffs. He arranges the war’s significant naval campaigns and battle from across the seven seas into one engaging narrative. Although representing the navies of a dozen nations, a certain pride of place goes to the U.S. Navy, without which the war—at least in the Pacific—would not have been won. Of course, America could not have stood alone, even at sea. Fair toward all sides, Symonds summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of the opponents including the men in charge as well as the warships they commanded.

Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father (Ecco), by Peter Stark

George Washington had no idea he’d become the father of his country when he set forth on a mission in 1753 that accidently when set off the French and Indian War. He bungled badly. But rather than slink away in failure, he absorbed the lessons of failure. In Young Washington, Peter Stark explores his little known early life as a hero’s journey of transformation in which a callow young man was tested by fire and emerged stronger, wiser. By 1775, when he became commander-in-chief of a nascent nation, he had become the dignified, capable leader from the history books. As Stark points out, his tactical sensibility may have been influenced by his battles with Native Americans. Although he looked down on them as savages, he learned from “their mobility and ability to adapt.”