The Last Gentleman
eBook - PDF

The Last Gentleman

Thomas Hughes and the End of the American Century

  1. 392 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Last Gentleman

Thomas Hughes and the End of the American Century

About this book

A behind-the-scenes account of American foreign policymaking in the late twentieth century
Tom Hughes, assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, made an ominous prediction in 1965. In a seminal but less well-known document of the Vietnam War, Hughes predicted that the Democratic Party and the national consensus underlying the nation's foreign policy would break apart if the war escalated.
Hughes drafted the memo for his friend and fellow Minnesotan for whom he had previously worked as legislative counsel, Senator Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey had just been elected Vice President. The memo called on President Johnson to seek negotiations to end the war, but clearly failed to persuade him.
Tom Hughes saw his prediction come true.
Hughes served in the State Department through 1970 and then for 20 years as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He worked to reestablish a professional, bipartisan foreign policy for the United States and to make the foreign service more open and democratic. He also built the Carnegie Endowment into the nation's leading foreign policy think tank, and he remained influential in foreign policy circles.
In this impressive biography, Bruce L. R. Smith tells the story of this remarkable life, which also reflects much of the story of America in the last half of the twentieth century.
Through the eyes, diary, and notes of a key participant, the book provides a contemporaneous perspective on such major events as the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the CIA's Operation Mongoose against the Castro regime, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, and the elections of the 1960s. This book is a firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of the people who dealt with the great issues and made critical life-and-death decisions for America during the cold war.

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Yes, you can access The Last Gentleman by Bruce Smith in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Diplomacy & Treaties. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Information
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Prologue
  7. Beginner Boy
  8. Teacher's Pet
  9. Student Federalist
  10. With Bowles and Humphrey
  11. Bowles in Congress
  12. The 1960 Presidential Election
  13. The New Frontier
  14. Intelligence and Covert Operations
  15. The Cuban Missile Crisis
  16. Diplomacy
  17. The Overthrow of Diem
  18. The Gulf of Tonkin Crisis
  19. The 1964 Vice Presidency
  20. The Humphrey-Hughes Memo
  21. Point of No Return
  22. Speaking Out
  23. The Most Turbulent Year
  24. London
  25. Carnegie: The House That Hughes Built
  26. Epilogue
  27. Notes
  28. Index
  29. Back Cover