If Kennedy Lived
The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History
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- €13.99
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- €13.99
Publisher Description
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?
The answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. If Kennedy Lived is a tour de force of American history from one of the country’s most brilliant and illuminating political commentators.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The premise of Greenfield's alternate history, a follow-up to 2011's Then Everything Changed, is certainly a fascinating one, fleshing out plausible scenarios of what might have happened had J.F.K. survived his trip to Dallas. Illustrating how often minor things can change the course of history, rain causes the bubble top on the presidential limo to stay on, thereby preventing Oswald's shots from proving fatal. The imagined fate of L.B.J., Kennedy's 1964 reelection campaign, and U.S. involvement in Vietnam are all believable, though Greenfield can't resist some throwaway lines that undermine the suspension of disbelief (e.g., " Makes sense,' Al Gore Jr. said. It'd be damned hard for a national candidate to lose his home state'"). Perhaps more fitting than plausible is what Jackie decides to do, in the light of her husband's philandering, after the couple leave the White House in 1969. In Greenfield's scenario, the overall arc of JFK's political career post 11/22/63 is logical and supports the point of such speculations to better understand what did happen by looking at the alternatives.
