Jeff GreenfieldReseñas

I was surprised to see this listed as a four star rating. This is, as the title states, a look at what possibly could have happened had JFK survived the assignation attempt. The book begins with the trip to Dallas on a rainy day. The bubble shield is on the limo. As the car makes the turn past the book depository, shots ring out and the bubble top explodes in pieces. A bullet hits Kennedy in the spine. A hurried drive to Parkland Hospital with an invasive surgery, allow the polls to increase, and a temporary hero is back in the White House.

Kennedy's injuries add to his already compromised spinal health, but he can walk. From there on we see a president who is physically, emotionally weak. Kennedy pays a high price in lack of southern support because of his pro-civil rights legislation.

Living with the fact that his terrible mistake in the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba is a thorn in his side when he seeks another term. His ensuing decisions not to take pro- active stances regarding war label him a soft candidate when he runs for his second term.

Kennedy's meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna showed him as an ill-prepared weakling resulting in the Berlin wall. As Kennedy's personal life spins out of control his sexual liaison are now fodder for the a media no longer willing to look the other way.

Overall, I can't recommend this book. It was dry, pedantic and uninteresting.

Beginning with the fateful change from recorded history of using a protective bubble top for President Kennedy's limousine in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the book follows plausible actions by Kennedy and others intersecting with actual events to create a believable, although workmanlike, alternate history. We follow Kennedy into his second term, where he accomplishes many things (perhaps too smoothly), but a scandal arises, based on his known infidelities, that threatens to derail his second term.

NOTE: I have categorized this as Nonfiction, even though the alternate histories are fictional, because of the solid layer of facts underlying the speculation.

Substance: Grenfield certainly knows his subjects (was a player himself) and also incorporates much of what was secret at the time and later revealed (published 2011).
Don't read this unless you really know the subject, or don't care to separate fact (and its spin) from fiction from speculation.

His preference for Robert Kennedy and Gary Hart as "presidents" does not blind him totally to their flaws (in fact, one major theme is that the disasters that overtook some men in reality were in the wings for others; don't want to get too more detailed because, spoilers).
He caught me one time: I didn't believe the media actually did turn on Teddy Kennedy when he campaigned for prez. That may have been an object lesson for them later during Clinton's debacle. The scenarios are all plausible (despite the wish fulfillment aspects) and contain a number of humorous jabs.

Style: This is for the serious poli-wonk, who is comfortable reading (non)fiction details about politicians and policy.
One major complaint (Greenfield is not the only transgressor but the habit irritates me a lot). After a long section on one person, he starts the next section and runs for several long paragraphs on pronouns only, leaving the subject in "suspense" -- but it's unnecessary and annoying.
Note that the three scenarios are totally independent, not cumulative changes. All the fictional changes are "reset" for the succeeding campaign and reign.

2015-04-11 Stuart Schneiderman's blog "Had Enough Therapy?"
http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2015/04/can-anyone-change-course-of-histo....

I really enjoyed reading this book. I've been a fan of alternate history books (the books by Turtledove are a favorite) for some time, and am glad that I've had the opportunity to add this book to my library. The direction this topic went was very plausible and it was fun to consider the "what if's". I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in JFK or in alternative history.

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: At 5:00 p.m. on September 11, 2001, an ashen-faced but composed President Al Gore stepped into the East Room of the White House to deliver a televised address to the nation. With him were former presidents Clinton and Bush, as well as Texas governor George W. Bush—flown to Washington from Dallas on a military jet, his first visit back to the capital after the close race that lost him the presidency just months before.

That’s not how you remember it?

Imagine if the 2000 presidential election had turned out differently and Al Gore had defeated George W. Bush to become the 43rd president of the United States. How might events have played out? Would Osama bin Laden have loomed as large? Would the 9/11 attacks have been even worse? Would we have invaded Iraq? Would the economy have plunged into recession?

This is the provocative alternate universe of 43*, a riveting thriller by veteran political commentator Jeff Greenfield. Richly reported and anchored in actual events, 43*: When Gore Beat Bush is the fascinating follow-up to Greenfield’s bestselling Then Everything Changed, which imagined what-if scenarios for the Kennedy, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations.

Greenfield takes readers deep inside the Gore administration and reveals high-level meetings, top-secret programs, and ego-fueled battles that forever altered the global landscape. And in Greenfield’s hauntingly plausible parallel universe, the law of unintended consequences has a dramatic effect on the fate of the United States.

“It’s the ‘butterfly effect,’” writes Greenfield, “where one dead butterfly millions of years ago leads to a contemporary world immeasurably more coarse, less kind. It’s the notion of the old nursery rhyme: ‘For want of a nail the kingdom was lost.’”

My Review: I'll lead off with the fact that I agree with Greenfield's central premise: No way in HELL was a Gore presidency going to be an easy and smooth continuation of Clinton's easy and smooth presidency. (pause for hilarious laughter) Lieberman was a stupid, bad choice for veep; Gore himself was visibly annoyed by the process of campaigning on an even footing with that simpering chimp, and it showed; and perhaps most tellingly, Gore is a smart man, and Murrikinz hates them some smart folk. Lookit what happened to that nice perfesser dude in the 1950s. (Adlai Stevenson, for the furriners and nursery crowd.)

Rep. Tom DeLay would've been a freakin' nightmare opponent as Speaker-in-fact, Sen. Jesse Helms, well, let's just say there's some folks for whom death is too good, and on and on and on. This is matched against Gore's clear strengths: at that time, 25 years in Washington as an elected official, a lifetime in politics via his daddy's Senate life, a pretty blonde wife with some wingnutty ideas about free speech that would've played well in the shitty little GOP burgs that, for some reason, haven't been ethnically cleansed. Proof positive there is no vast left-wing conspiracy, that.

And while I agree that Gore's proven effectiveness at knocking heads saved the 1996 Olympics, I don't agree with Mr. Greenfield's assessment that a Gore presidency would've been ineffective at doing much the same in DC's intelligence community. I suspect that Mr. Greenfield had excellent reasons for his choice...read the Acknowledgments, man's up on this stuff...but I dunno, this seems an easy-to-write choice, not an inevitable one. Like the millionaire tax-free battle. Like the dot-bust. Due attention is paid to the screaming rooms at Faux News and on Wingnut Central Raddee-O-Land, and their entrenched right-wing insane clown posse. These would've made Gore's life hell, as they have Obama's. Like enough, they'd've been even more strident under Gore because of their sense of outrage: He's one of us and he's not twangin' the Teabilly Horst Wessel!

Whatever my cavils about that, let me assure you the piece is well-written and contains the trademark Greenfield slyness. Moments of savorable irony for political junkies are placed hither, thither, and yon, but those without the information needed to appreciate them won't feel a sharp whizz as the ninja star slices their hair-do.

So why the mingy three-and-a-half of five rating? Because, in the end, I felt I was being in-the-roomed. I was too close to the trees and I wanted a look at the forest. Now a big part of that is the length of the piece, at under 100pp. Can't do it all, after all, when you're aiming at the lunch-plus-commute reader. But it's more than that. Greenfield knows a lot more than I do about his subject. He's telling his own story, and it's got plausibility everywhere and everywhen. So why is it that I can purse my lips and shake my head and wonder what makes you think that follows from this other thing? Just working from his own data presented in the piece, I wasn't as sold as I expected to be.

But I was sold enough to say this to you: Spend $1.99 on this Kindle Single and you'll have ~2hrs tops of well-crafted, thought-provoking, and ultimately satisfying counterfactual fun.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.½

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: November 22, 1963: JFK does not die. What would happen to his life, his presidency, his country, his world?

Based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting, and his own knowledge of the players, this book looks at the tiny hinges of history—and the extraordinary changes that would have resulted if they had gone another way.

Now he presents his most compelling narrative of all about the historical event that has riveted us for fifty years. What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place?

As with Then Everything Changed, the answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. It is a tour de force of American political history.

My Review: See all those questions in the publisher's copy above? Those are the very ones that Jeff Greenfield, a pundit and powerful columnist, addresses with a great deal of panache and a large helping of nerve. Greenfield was often seen on Nightline during its glory years as THE political chat show.

Greenfield graduated with a JD from Yale before going to work for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy after the president was assassinated. That in mind, imagine my surprise when RFK comes across as a really vicious, very nasty character in this telling of his brother's presidency. Apparently he was no saint. But then again, neither was Jack, as we all now know.

What makes me most happy about this book is its major weakness: If you're not conversant with the politics and personalities of that day, this book will read like a fairly dry novel. Without knowing the name McGeorge Bundy, for example, there's not much point in picking up the book. Better yet, if the name carries with it an image of hornrims and a honking accent, the book will light a little Eternal Flame for Camelot.

And for my own part, I'd LOVE to have seen what Vaughn Meader would've done with a second term! (Yes, I know that went whoooshing over a lot of non-gray heads. So will the rest of the book.)

So why give the serviceable, journalistic prose four stars? Because the prose isn't the point. The tale, the imagining of JFK fighting and winning a very different 1964 election battle and doing so much damage to his own interests...that is what people with memories of that horrible, horrible moment in time when our president was murdered before our horrified eyes would pay the $12.99 for a Kindle copy, or $26.95 for a hardcover version of the book to experience.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I love a good, plausible alternate political history and thoroughly enjoyed Greenfield's trio of novellas, Then Everything Changed, as well as his Kindle single about Al Gore beating George W. Bush. As a result, I thought I'd love his alternate history about how JFK survived the November 22, 1963 assassination attempt and lived to have a second term. Alas, I liked it, but did not love it.

The book takes a look at such key events as whether JFK would've won a second term, what we would've done in Vietnam had JFK lived, what might've happened with civil rights/voting rights, and whether the hippies and other countercultural events might've happened.

One thing I like about Greenfield's books is that they are plausible and he cites sources for the positions he takes. They are not "out there" and, with a few minor twists or turns, they could've happened.

As I say, I'd liked this book, but didn't love it. He doesn't go out on many limbs and, in fact, is awfully cautious in his predictions. This is quite a limited alternate political history. Very policy-oriented and, unfortunately, somewhat dry at times.

I think the novella or Kindle single is actually a better format for alternate political history. To me, it felt like he was stretching things to try to create an entire book. By the end of the book, by the end of JFK's second term, it seems like he was really stretching things to keep the book going. I wish he'd put his political focus aside a bit more and gone more into greater detail about how our society might be different had JFK lived.

Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting, thought-provoking book and I admit that I did not see the ending coming. I just think that he might've done more with it. It's a bit skimpier than I would've expected. Very good, but not great.

The story begins on the morning of November 22, 1963, with the assumption that all events prior to that date happened just as they did in history. However, one fateful decision would be made this day, a change that would alter the course of history. It was something that very possibly could have happened: The bubble top was left on Kennedy’s limousine and he survived the assassination attempt in Dallas, similar to what happened to Ronald Reagan years later in the actual historical timeline.

The author goes on to imagine the Kennedy presidency maintaining plausibility by using real events and actual quotes from history. I was hoping for a fictionalized story about an alternate America, but that is not what this book is about. It is written as if it were non-fiction, in a news documentary style. The focus is on political issues and predictions, on how they would have turned out had a Kennedy Administration been making the decisions. For example, knowing that Kennedy wanted to avoid an all out war in Vietnam, how would that have affected his relationship with Congress and the ability to pass other legislation such as the Civil Rights Act.

To become truly immersed in this book the reader needs a good foundation in the history of the era. Political junkies will appreciate the detail and the research that went into this novel. The casual reader may not catch a lot of twists in history and I’m sure I missed a few of them myself. I liked the author’s use of actual quotes from real historical figures and attributing them to other people, times or places. For example a joke told by Johnny Carson about Nixon was attributed to Johnson in the alternate time line.

It’s been fifty years since John Kennedy’s assassination but the topic is as fascinating and timely as ever. If Kennedy Lived will be appreciated most by political buffs but you don’t have to be a historian to enjoy this speculative tale.½

This is a book based on an alternate history. It is very interesting to think about what the world would be really like if JFK had really lived. Was JFK the peace keeper portrayed or would he have gone to war. Would he have ended the Cuban embargo earlier? Would he have met with China and come to an agreement with the communist leaders around the world? Would he have pushed for civil rights?

It is a unique idea that the war in Vietnam might never have happened. It has me wondering personally that if the Vietnam war never happened, what other changes might have been and how might the world be different today.

It is a very interesting book and one that made me think of all the changes that might have been if Kennedy had lived and since I grew up with the Vietnam war, and can remember the televised events surrounding the Kennedy assignation, it had me intrigued with what might have been.

If Kennedy Lived
By Jeff Greenfield
Publisher: G. P. Putnam & Sons
Published In: New York City, NY, USA
Date: 2013
Pgs: 249

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
November 22, 1963. Shots ring out in Dallas, TX, only it’s raining, and the President’s limo has a bubble shell over the covertible. Kennedy is wounded, but not killed. This is the story of the first and second terms of a John F. Kennedy who survived his 1963 trip to Dallas and what it meant to the people and politics of the era.

Genre:
fiction, what if, alternate history

Why this book:
It’s a What If and a Kennedy story. I was hooked in this run up to the 50th anniversary.

This Story is About:
could have beens

Favorite Character:
This JFK in trying to be strong in the face of shaky military intelligence being fed to him on Vietnam. He gets characterized as weak by the good old boys of the military industrial complex as he pushes peace as his primary goal in the run up to the election for his second term.

Least Favorite Character:
Bobby Kennedy isn’t being presented in a very positive light in this book. I wonder if his image got a significant makeover in the wake of his brother’s passing. The ideal that RFK couldn’t go from zero to Presidentially electable without ever having run for another elective office is probably spot on.
Most of those military industrial complex guys who appear in the lead in toward the election day of JFK’s second term. The crappy way they play politics with information and disinformation feeding it to the press and the electorate under cover of the night.

Character I Most Identified With:
I didn’t get the feel that I could walk a mile in any of these characters’ shoes.

The Feel:
The story reads like a documentary instead of a what if.

Favorite Scene:
LBJ running off to hide at his Texas ranch from the Senate investigations and news reports of ethics violations that keep coming closer to him.
JFK calling out his military advisors and the military adjuncts who tried to feed him a line about an attack on an American naval vessel in North Vietnamese waters illegally. The advisors expecting a rubber stamp and a blank check and instead getting a reasoned response and a wait and see attitude that infuriated them.

Settings:
Dallas; DC; the 1964 campaign trail

Pacing:
The pace of the story is excellent.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
N/A

Last Page Sound:
...and that’s it. The story delivered what it promised with an unexpected surprise in the denouement, but it didn’t end anything like what I expected.

Author Assessment:
I would give other books written by Greenfield a shot.

Editorial Assessment:
The editing of the tome was spot on.

Did the Book Cover Reflect the Story:
An image of a smiling JFK, I’d say yes.

Song the Story Reminds me of or That Plays in my Head While Reading:
Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin

Illustrations:
No

Hmm Moments:
I wasn’t aware of the firestorm that was building surrounding LBJ’s ethics and influence peddling in the Congress.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
glad I read it

Disposition of Book:
Irving Public Library, Irving, TX

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
There’s enough Kennedy stuff on the screen. The last thing we really need is another movie regardless of whether it is a good story or not.

Casting call:
N/A

Would recommend to:
Kennedyphiles, alternate historians, fans of what ifs

Good read, good alternative history. And in full disclosure the author and I both worked for ABC and in the same building. I met him a couple of times, to sign other books as I recall.

I was 16 at the time of the assassination. I was one of millions caught up in the draft, or in my case totally avoiding it; I enlisted. There is convincing evidence that JFK planned on removing US forces from Vietnam by December 1965 * . I've no idea what that would have done to me, as I learned my profession at US Signal School avoiding service in Vietnam (I was at the Paris Peace Talks in 1970).

Nothing is implausible, I can remember at 15 wondering just where LBJ got the family fortune. OK, there was no wonder, his wife applied to the FCC for free broadcast licenses, which she was found to be the best candidate for.

It does of course bring up the question of CIA involvement in the assassination, but it doesn't change my opinion; they had nothing to do with it, although they may well have known of Oswald and made no move to stop it.

I don’t see Hoover making it past 70 with Bobby still around, and if he had Defense, I can well see a military guard around Hoover’s love nest when he came back from work some night. Posse Comitatus has less force in the Military District than elsewhere.

Good, tightly written, and speculation within possibility.

And I would have 50,000 living brothers and sisters.

* 3rd letter by Galbraith http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/books/review/letters-searching-for-kennedy.htm...

As someone who loves reading alternate histories, I really enjoyed this book. It looks at how the remainder of JFK’s term and his second term could have realistically played out had he survived the assassination attempt at Dallas. The author builds this alternate history based on facts. This book takes into consideration the various political, social, and economic factors that were at play in the 1960s and considers how JFK and others would have believably reacted them. He also discusses how the political landscape might have been altered had JFK survived, leading to a very different future. This book is well-written and fast-paced. It’s relatively short, but manages to cover an array of topics. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in political history or alternate history.

As with his previous work of alternate history, Then Everything Changed (Putnam, 2013), Jeff Greenfield delivers here a wonderfully plausible and completely absorbing history of the 1960s as they might have been, had one tiny meteorological detail been different.

Great fun to read closely for all the little details that Greenfield includes.½

If Kennedy Lived by Jeff Greenfield pretty much answers the question posed at the top of the book jacket: "November 22, 1963: JFK does not die. What would happen to his life, his presidency, his country, his world?" Early in the book Greenfield sets up the invented by detailing the actual, as well as throughout the book, referring back to actual events to ground the invented events.

This books touches on such subjects as whether or not LBJ would have been dropped from the ticket when JFK ran for re-election, what his relationship with Jackie might have been after the White House years, how involved the USA would have been in Vietnam, would the Cuban embargo have remained, what would the USA's relationship with Russia have been and many other fascinating topics. A well-written, compelling book as one would expect from Greenfield, an accomplished writer and man of many talents. If you are interested in JFK and the days of Camelot and Alternative History, you'll like this book.

Some estimate books about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy number in the thousands. And with the 50th anniversary of the assassination coming next month, there's been a growing stream of them this year about the assassination and Kennedy's presidency and its legacy. Amidst the avalanche, political commentator Jeff Greenfield contemplates where we would be if Kennedy had not been killed. He does so through the alternative history trope in If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History.

This isn't Greenfield's first venture into this genre. Last year, he released a Kindle single on Al Gore beating George Bush in the 2000 presidential election and Two years ago he took a broader scope in Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan.

As Greenfield points out in both the preface and afterword to If Kennedy Lived, he believes alternative history needs to be founded on plausibility. Thus, everything prior to November 22, 1963, that plays a role in the book actually happened and Greenfield's conjectures are predicated on historical documents of the times and thoughts of the actual people. Greenfield seeks to explore only what realistically might have happened, not with inventions like the time traveler who tries to prevent Kennedy's assassination in Stephen King's bestselling 11/22/63. Yet while a degree of plausibility is essential to believable alternative history, If Kennedy Lived also reveals the limitations of strict adherence to this approach.

Greenfield explores a number of key issues that might have been affected by Kennedy's death, such as whether he would have kept U.S. forces in Vietnam or the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He even considers the possibility and ramifications of Kennedy's philandering becoming public. Yet even the latter has a wonkish feel. The book tends to examine what might have happened more through policy debates than in terms of social ramifications. This doesn't mean Greenfield totally ignores social impact. For example, he contemplates how different decisions about Vietnam might have affected the nature and focus of the protest movements of the 1960s. It's just that there seems to be more discussion about policy and political implications of that change.

Greenfield both displays and uses a bit of irony when it comes to actual history. He points out that although Kennedy was pushing for tax cuts in 1963, the Republicans strenuously opposed the idea (although Congress approved cuts in 1964). The irony extends to noted individuals. For example, when the treasurer of a company founded by Jerry Rubin embezzles the money, Greenfield has Rubin saying, "I never should have trusted an accountant under thirty." And in this timeline Richard Nixon does not tell David Frost in 1977 that "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal." Instead, this Nixon complains about the Kennedy Administration's use of the IRS, saying, "Just because a president does it does not mean it's legal."

Certainly, given what those individuals actually said, it is plausible they might have said what Greenfield suggests. And perhaps it is because of this insistence on plausibility that the book concludes on the eve of the 1968 election, the end of the second term Kennedy wins in it. Thus, Greenfield does not extrapolate from the alternative scenarios he posits to look look at even longer term consequences.

Although unquestionably well researched and written, If Kennedy Lived has a bit too much of an "inside politics" feel.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

This is my first foray into alternate history, I enjoyed it very much. The author didn't tweak things too much, and this made it very believable. It was fun while reading this book to think, "wow, what if". Things may have have been drastically different if Kennedy had survived, the cold war probably would not drug on like it did, we would have had normal relations with Cuba, and Vietnam probably would not have happened. I highly recommend this book for your reading pleasure.

Brilliant, fun, informative book. It was very believable and intriguing. Definitely worth picking up and reading, and I am proud to add it to my library.

This is a very readable book. Written in the style of a history book, and including tweaked historical events and speeches, I found it very believable. The author tries to take what could have actually happened, and tries to keep it plausible. It was not a Stephen King type book... but it starts off with the small facts, and the author tries to keep it fact-based. He obviously put a lot of thought into this book.

read the first installment, about JFK's alternate death. Fascinating glimpse into what might have been, but entirely too much politics, and my own lack of knowledge/interest about RFK's career and assassination ultimately led me to put the book away in part 2; never reached part 3 about Reagan.

Most of us are aware of how much life can change in a minute: A gunshot kills someone. A gun shot misses killing someone. A person says the wrong thing and damages a relationship. A person says or explains everything correctly. Using fact and fiction in THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED, Jeff Greenfield puts this to a test by exploring how the United States might have been different if the actual scenarios had differed.
In the first incident, an extremist planned to run a car filled with explosives into John F. Kennedy’s car in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 11, 1960. He had been stalking the president-elect for quite awhile. Just before JFK got into his car, though, Jackie and Caroline Kennedy came out of the house to wave goodbye. The man did not want to kill him in front of his wife and child, so he aborted his plan.
In THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED, when the door opened, a housekeeper came out. The man carried out his plan and JFK, along with many others including the press corps, were killed. This was after JFK was elected in a close and, in some ways, suspected election but before the Electoral College had met. There was no precedent for such an event. Beside trying to determine who should become President, Greenfield explores how the new President handled The Bay of Pigs campaign, dealing with the Russians, and the Peace Corps.
Chapter two imagines Sirhan Sirhan’s bullet being deflected and Robert Kennedy not being killed Los Angeles on June 4, 1968. Greenfield ponders how the campaign for president would have been affected as well as the Democrat Convention in Chicago that year and, again, what new President would have faced and done during the next four years in the White House.
The third chapter raises President Ford’s debate response “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” Instead of dooming his campaign, he is able to extricate himself admirably and the original statement is forgotten. Can he win election? What if Teddy Kennedy was being protected by the Secret Service and no one died at Chappaquiddick? What if the Democrat’s candidate in 1980 had been able to throw Ronald Reagan off his stride in the single 1980 debate?
The alternative, fictional histories include how event would have changed not only the US relationship with other countries and major domestic issues, but also things like the movie M.A.S.H., Ted Koppel’s nighttime television show, and “The Jeffersons.”
It introduces issues that are current in the United States: pollution, class division, the economy, fuel efficient cars. Robert Kennedy quotes the Philadelphia head of the NAACP when he criticized welfare stating “it told the men in the ghetto ‘we have no useful work for you to do.’” Al Gore, Jr., as a newly elected congressman says his “first act would be to introduce a Constitutional amendment to award the Presidency to the popular-vote winner.” Dick Cheney, as the White House Chief of Staff talks about simplistic solutions states, “Putting the awesome power of the President in than hands of the purveyors of the politics of platitudes is like putting a loaded gun in the hands of a novice and inviting him to hunt: Someone is likely to get hurt.”
As he explains at the end of the book, much of the dialogue is taken from actual speeches and comments made by the characters in other situations.
Imagining what could happen if is a common activity. Jeff Greenfield has turned it into a thought-provoking book.

Even though I don't write about it too much here, I'm something of a politics junkie by nature, and I also happen to love some well-informed speculative writing, so when I learned that Jeff Greenfield had written Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011) the book went right on the "must read" list.

Putting his many years of political reporting and experience to good use, Greenfield has taken three "turning points" and spun out the longterm scenarios of what might have happened had things gone differently. As he writes in the preface, "what would have happened if small twists of fate had given us different leaders, with different beliefs, strengths, and weaknesses? I've tried here to answer that question by exploring, in dramatic narrative form, complete with characters, thoughts, and dialogue, a trio of contemporary alternate American histories, all flowing from events that came a mere hairsbreadth away from actually happening" (p. xii).

What if a suicide bomber had killed JFK outside his house in December, 1960, before the electors had cast their ballots? What if RFK hadn't been shot in June, 1968, just after winning the California primary? What if Gerald Ford had recovered from a crucial gaffe during a 1976 debate, and won reelection? Greenfield outlines what the next years and decades might have looked like under those circumstances. While some of the conclusions may seem implausible, far-fetched, or even silly, I'm hard pressed to say that any of Greenfield's flights of fancy are any less likely than some of the actual things we've seen in our politics over the last few decades.

From what he writes in the Acknowledgments, it would appear that Greenfield had been contracted to write a novel (he'd done an earlier one for Putnam). I'm glad that he ended up writing this book instead, and I certainly hope he had as much fun writing it as I had reading it. I absolutely loved the arcana he delved into, from the complicated mechanics of Democratic primary delegate math to the vice-presidential calculations of the 1980 candidates. If you get as excited about these things as I do, go out and buy this book, and read it closely.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2011/09/book-review-then-everything-changed.html

I enjoyed it, though sometimes it feels as though Greenfield tries too hard to make a witty comment (i.e., George McGovern saying "A running mate with a mental issue will kill a campaign" or something similar. In real life, McGovern chose Sen. Tom Eagleton to be his running mate during his own presidential run in 1972. Eagleton had a history of mental illness).

While it's far from a perfect alt-hist, the market has so few good ones that this is in the upper echelon. Pick this up if you enjoy the genre.

A veteran political speechwriter's and strategist's alternative history of what might have happened during the presidencies of JFK, RFK, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan had certain incidents either not happened or happened differently. The author tries to do too much. The results are initially promising (and made me miss the MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT series of campaign histories by Teddy White, but they can't be sustained.

Three-quarters of the way through the book, I bailed.

4831. Then Everything Changed Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan, by Jeff Greenfield (read 11 Jun 2011) I thought this book, setting out alternate scenarios as to 20th century political history, starting out with a fantastic account of what would have happened if JFK had been assassinated in Nov 1960--there was a nut who did try to kill him then--did not live up to my expectations. Good alternative history is difficult, since it encounters one's preconceptions as to what was likely. The first scenario, as to JFK and LBJ, was the best or most interesting of the three set out. The second scenario is an account of what would have followed if Sirhan Sirhan had failed on June 6, 1968, to kili Bobby. The third scenario was based on Jerry Ford not flubbing up in his debate with Carter, and going on to win in 1976. That account goes on to show how the 1980 election would have been changed. In general, alternative history is an exercise in fantasy, I guess.

Because I am such a sucker for “what if?” types of books, “Then Everything Changed” is right up my alley. I heard the author interviewed on the radio…a few months ago? The idea of a book about what MIGHT have happened if a few key events had/had not taken place in the political arena was fascinating to me.

I found myself absolutely engrossed in the well researched and well supported alternate political realities that author Jeff Greenfield laid out. Instead of taking some obvious “What ifs?” like “What if JFK hadn’t been assassinated?” he starts at a little known point in history, (which in itself was fascinating) and then JFK is killed before he takes office. He then lays out such realistic and dramatic difference scenarios that the reader is sucked into this new history. Some changes are for the better, some are worse…and many are both. Some historical events that really did happen just happen sooner or later than they did in reality and some happen in completely different ways. He then does the same for RFK, Carter, Ford and Regan.

The one criticism I had for the book is the wink and nod that Greenfield gives in his alternate versions to the future/the events that really did take place. Comments like a presidential aide in 1963 saying, “…let’s be serious: there’s no way on earth the public would ever stand for a court deciding who is going to be president.” Or in 1976, when a presidential candidate wins the popular vote but loses the electoral vote, “A newly elected twenty-eight-year old congressman from Tennessee, Al Gore, Jr., announced that his first act would be to introduce a Constitutional amendment to award the Presidency to the popular-vote winner. “It is indefensible,” Gore said, “that a candidate who received the most votes would be denied the Presidency by an archaic, outmoded mechanism, and we must ensure that no future candidate will ever suffer this outrageous injustice.” And then when an unexpected President is caught in a compromising situation by his Deputy Chief of Staff, the scene it just too cutesy. I wish there were fewer of these clever plot points, so I didn’t find myself rolling my eyes as much.

I learned a great deal from this book, most notably about the Middle East (which is a topic of which I am hopelessly ignorant) and about many of the players in 1960s Democratic politics, which was very interesting. I would recommend this book to other political junkies and to anyone who like to imagine what might have been…½