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    Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford,Reagan
    Unavailable
    Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford,Reagan
    Unavailable
    Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford,Reagan
    Audiobook17 hours

    Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford,Reagan

    Written by Jeff Greenfield

    Narrated by Jeff Greenfield and Michael Kramer

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A brilliant and brilliantly entertaining tour de force of American politics from one of journalism's most acclaimed commentators.History turns on a dime. A missed meeting, a different choice of words, and the outcome changes dramatically. Nowhere is this truer than in the field where Jeff Greenfield has spent most of his working life, American politics, and in three dramatic narratives based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting with journalists and key participants, and Greenfield's own knowledge of the principal players, he shows just how extraordinary those changes would have been.These things are true: In December 1960, a suicide bomber paused fatefully when he saw the young president-elect's wife and daughter come to the door to wave goodbye...In June 1968, RFK declared victory in California, and then instead of talking to people in another ballroom, as intended, was hustled off through the kitchen...In October 1976, President Gerald Ford made a critical gaffe in a debate against Jimmy Carter, turning the tide in an election that had been rapidly narrowing.But what if it had gone the other way? The scenarios that Greenfield depicts are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. You will never think about recent American history in the same way again.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 8, 2011
    ISBN9781101432389
    Unavailable
    Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford,Reagan
    Author

    Jeff Greenfield

    Jeff Greenfield (b. 1943) is one of the most prominent political writers in the United States. Born in New York City, he went to college in Wisconsin, and received a law degree from Yale. He entered politics in the late 1960s, as a speechwriter for Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and has covered the beltway ever since, contributing to Time,the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and, in a lighter vein,  National Lampoon. His first novel, The People’s Choice, was released in 1995, and ruthlessly satirized the foibles of the Clinton era. His most recent book, Then Everything Changed, is a series of novellas looking at how American history might have been different if small political events had turned out differently. Greenfield divides his time between New York and Connecticut.

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    Reviews for Then Everything Changed

    3.5/5

    33 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is an amazing book. Highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      I thought this book, setting out alterante scenarios as to 20th century political history, starting out with a fantastic account of what would have happened if JFK had been assassiubated 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 scenarion 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.
    • 5/5
      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…