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Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories Of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan (2011)

by Jeff Greenfield(Favorite Author)

3.6 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0399157069 (ISBN13: 9780399157066)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Putnam Adult

review 1: One of the best alternate history novels that I've ever read. The author explored what might have happened had JFK been assassinated before he was sworn in as President, or if Robert Kennedy hadn't been assassinated & had gone on to win the Democratic nomination for President, or if Gerald Ford had been re-elected. It was all based on speeches and quotes from real politicians who are fictional & thrust into slightly different roles and situations than what actually happened. I felt like I was reading a great action novel at times - a real page turner if you like this genre.
review 2: 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 relationshi... morep. 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. less

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