Frederick Kempe

“Why would anyone write a book about an administration that has nothing to show for itself but a string of disasters?” - President John F. Kennedy, September 22, 1961.
That is how this book starts and that is how it continues from the very first page. The book is a long one (a tome actually), that covers only one year in President John F. Kennedy’s life - the year he was inaugurated-1961. A young, untried President was at the helm of the nation that was and still is the leader of the free world. He was up against a very formidable opponent. This opponent was battle-hardened, a consummate chess player and one who was the head of the Communist world - Nikita Khrushchev. The battle ground is the divided Berlin after the end of World War II. Khrushchev, fully aware of the danger and the powder keg that was Berlin, said over and over, “Berlin is the most dangerous place on earth.” Let me tell you, Kempe spares no punches as he writes in extreme detail about all the happenings in 1961, right from Kennedy’s disastrous Bay of Pigs offensive, through to the Berlin upheaval and the building of the wall and to the Cuban Missile crisis. We get an insider’s look at Kennedy’s and Khrushchev’s political maneuverings, back room dealings. Intelligence reports and an unflinching look at the world’s reaction to all the things that went on in that year. This book is very well-researched and very complex. It’s not for someone who is looking for escapist reading, but it immersed me totally right from the very beginning to the explosive ending. I am sure that I am not the only person in the world who didn’t realize how close we came to a nuclear war in this very alarming and unstable part of world history.The book is a tour-de-force in my opinion, in that it uncovers more than we have ever previously known about the young President Kennedy and his ongoing combative and unstable relationship with Mr. Nikita Khrushchev. At the very end of this book Kennedy makes a long-overdue visit to West Berlin, and on the western side of the wall he made his most memorable speech that he ever made on foreign soil. I will leave you with that.
“There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t understand, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words. — “Ich bin fin, Berliner.” - President John F. Kennedy - West Berlin - June 26, 1963. (Just 3 short months before an assassin’s bullet killed him in Dallas.)… (més)