About, midtown manhattan, and a couple preliminaries before we roll into this illustrated talk. I like that better than power point as a term. Im not good at power point. Its not that im a luddite. Im just not good at technology. Im just a technological idiot. Well, this is not the supreme city is not the book i originally set out to write. The original idea was to do the whole city, all five boroughs, and stretch it out from world war i to world war ii, but without trying to be too cute, i took too big a bite out of the apple, and i discovered as i was doing my research that there was i was really drawn to a really compelling story within the larger story i had intended to tell, and its an untold story actually. Its been told in bits and pieces, but its never been stitched together as a compelling historical narrative, and that story is the rise of the the sudden and spectacular rise i should say of midtown manhattan in the 1920s which was an urban backwater before 1919. There wasnt a
I had to wait a long time for this. I was at basic training in fort jackson. The the obviously here easily, and and the cadre and the mess talking about the restraints that the personnel of bjl. And lbj and the restraints that he was under was the incremental buildup that johnson put him through and the administration and i dont think you spoke much about it and just an observation of my own that the only thing i saw later on that what really worked that scared the bejeaners was a linebacker one and two. That got them, you know, to the to negotiate with us. Thats an important point, i think, that clearly west moreland is dealing with the with the theory of graduated pressure which is which kind of takes hold in the National Security establishment. This idea that we can determine how much pressure to ratchet up or ratchet back and eventually hanoi will realize that it cant win this long war because we have the ability to either ratchet up or ratchet back. Unfortunately, we dont have tha
The war, the pace of military operations or determine the pace of how quickly the local population is seen the south vietnamese government as a legitimate entity. And so what you see here, i think, are some disconnects, not only in modernization theorys the that we talked about earlier but also this theory of graduated pressure. As we talked about a little bit earlier in the evening, theres a difference clearly between articulating strategy and implementing it. And i think this is a clear case of that. So thank you. [ applause ] here are some of the programs youll find this weekend on the cspan networks. Saturday at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan, live coverage of the Memorial Service for former washington, d. C. Mayor marion barry and sunday evening at 8 00 on cspans q a, ann compton who recently retired after 40 years as abc News White House correspondent. Saturday night at 10 00 on book tv on cspan2, assistant professor jason sokol on how the northeast u. S. Wasnt always the haven of
Vietnam wouldve pursued that agenda of world domination. But it didnt turn out that way. It turned out more the way dave gordon describes it. Right. What happened between then and now . Part of the problem, i think, is that lezuan and the politburo is also balancing their own requirements. And we need to realize that after the bifurcation of vietnam in 1954 where there is two entities, a south and north vietnam, that in north vietnam, hanois leaders ho chi minh and ultimately lezuan are having to make decisions about supporting an insurgency in the south to reunify this country in the aftermath of a long and bloody colonial conflict or anticolonial conflict and also build their own stable nation in the north. And that is a debate again, hang brings this up in hanois war. That others are constantly having to make choices between building a political, a stable Political Community in the north and feeding and reinforcing the southern insurgency in the south. So in the aftermath of the ame
Youre watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. BookTv Television for serious readers. From my father i inherited my confidence my resilience, my passion, and my audacity, looking back although it was never explained to me in this way, he taught me the spirit of which is greek idea of honor and doing the right thing, even when ones own interests or even ones own life is in peril. Growing up while i never fought anything but australian there were two stories about the Second World War and greece that i always kept close to my heart. The first was in 1940 when Benito Mussolini italys Prime Minister asked the greek Prime Minister for free passage through greece and on the spot at 3 00 in the morning without hesitation, without consultation he said oy he said no. It was spirited defiance and quite incredible when considering just how vastly outnumbered the greeks were by the italians. It prompted sir winston churchhill, the greatest figure of the 20th c