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

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

Product Description

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.

From Publishers Weekly

Speculation isn't history, but it's catnip to pundits and journalists like veteran CBS News reporter and commentator Greenfield (The Real Campaign), who can be excused for this romp into what ifs. He rightly says that alternative history's foundation is plausibility. And since he's read widely in the sources, his excursions into possible histories are decently anchored to the ground.

In the first narrative, an actual failed attempt to assassinate JFK before his inauguration instead succeeds. LBJ takes his place, Guantánamo is wiped out by a rogue Soviet missile, and war with the U.S.S.R. is only narrowly averted. In the second narrative, Robert Kennedy isn't assassinated, beats Nixon in 1968, winds down the Vietnam War, and with no Watergate scandal, the cultural changes of the 1970s are averted. The third account has Ford winning re-election, but in 1980 it's Hart vs. Reagan, and Hart wins.

Of course, there are other possible scenarios, which Greenfield doesn't discuss. And in these novelistic narratives, readers drown in excess, irrelevant detail (dinner menus, precise times of meetings, exact conversations)—all wonkish pundit stuff, and none essential to Greenfield's purpose. In the end, fun but insubstantial.

From Booklist

Greenfield, chief political correspondent for CBS News, is also a successful novelist. Here, he tries something different: alternate history, delivering takes on three different moments in the not-so-distant American past.

Not many people remember that in December 1960, President-elect Kennedy was almost assassinated. What if Richard Pavlick had gotten to Kennedy three years before Lee Harvey Oswald? Conversely, what if Robert Kennedy had not gone through the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel where Sirhan Sirhan lay in wait?

And, in 1976, had Gerald Ford not made a mistake in his debate with Jimmy Carter, that election might have gone a different way. Inevitably, speculation plays a role in Greenfield's accounts, but he bolsters possible scenarios with ancedotes, quotes, and oral histories, all of which are sourced at the end of the book.

This reliance on sources is why Greenfield prefers that his work be called nonfiction, though some may disagree. Perhaps readers who remember the actual events and casts of players will be the book's best audience, but any history buff will appreciate these fascinating reinterpertations. --Ilene Cooper

Review

"Shrewdly written...riveting...Thanks to Mr. Greenfield's own familiarity with American politics and a lot of energetic research, he turns these twists of fate into accelerating historical snowballs that rumble through our recent history, altering the social landscape in way both small and large. In doing so he's produced three slyly observed novellas that...have the verisimilitude of real life." -Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Political junkies always play the 'what-if' game. Jeff Greenfield has taken it and turned it into something else entirely - a trio of thought-provoking, interesting, and downright clever scenarios which remind us just how much individuals do matter." -Bob Schieffer

"Jeff Greenfield is a wonderful story-teller and a keen student of politics. A powerful what-if book that seems painfully, tantalizingly real."
-Evan Thomas, Author, The War Lovers, Sea of Thunder, and Robert Kennedy: His Life

"Filled with fresh revelations and brilliant speculation, Jeff Greenfield's alternative history is so detailed and persuasive - and the behavior of its protagonists so utterly believable - that it feels like reality itself. This is a remarkable feat of insight, imagination, and storytelling." -Richard North Patterson

About the Author

Jeff Greenfield is the CBS News senior political correspondent, and a veteran of CNN and ABC News. A four-time Emmy Award winner, he is the author or coauthor of eleven books.