Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories Of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
This books has a fascinating premise, which is weighed down by several problems in execution.Let me say off the bat that I am not going to get into particular political points about the historical aspects of these events. Already the site is saturated with reviews written by people of limited intelligence whining that the highly flawed Ronald Reagan is presented as something other than the second coming of Jesus Christ. No point in debunking their fallacies. They are what they are.Rather, I choose to concentrate on the book's value as entertainment. It's potential to encourage thought. To, in its own words, be "stunning". I think it fails on all such counts, because it fails to have a coherent narrative that held my interest. If you are going to succeed at making such a book entertaining or thought provoking to the majority of people, you need a narrative that people can relate to and/or sympathize with. One that is accessible to non-experts. The narratives in this book are not.And why are they not? To begin with, each of the three separate narratives reads more like a text book than a narrative. Meticulous details on seemingly every backroom meeting over a certain period are projected to the reader, with so little attention paid to character, greater impact, or creativity that only a professor of history or politics is likely to find the writing interesting. Worse than that, 90% of that dry presentation is about history that actually happened, in the years (decades) leading up to Greenfield-proposed divergence. So much effort is put into making sure we as the reader understand all of the nuance of our real history, that by the time the "switch" takes place, we've fogged over. There's too much history and not enough alternate in this alternate history experiment.Even once we get to the alternate realities, we are overcome not only with a continued overly academic approach to the theoretical material, but we are treated to constant winks at our own, real history. I started to write these down, but ran out of room on my paper. One or two nods to the real world is fine, but Greenfield borders on satire or comedy with how many times he dips into this well. There's the poll conducted at the end of the first narrative, (JFK is never president) indicating how depressed America is...released on November 22, 1963. There's a young black college freshman named "Barry Obama" who gets his picture taken with Gary Hart in another narrative...for absolutely no reason whatsoever.Then there is the young, ambitious Conservative Roger Ailes, who laments in the late 1960's that none of the networks are "fair and balanced", and that something ought to be done about it. (Ho, ho!) Or there is the young senator from Tennessee, Al Gore Jr, who is mentioned just long enough in the same narrative for us to realize that he wishes to pass a law that makes certain someone who wins the popular presidential vote cannot lose the electoral college, because nobody should have to go through that. (Stunned yet?)Then there is Bob Woodward working the obscure beat when a potential Bobby Kennedy Watergate scandal breaks...at roughly the same time our Watergate actually broke. (Complete with Woodward quipping that he should write a book called "One of the President's Men.")There are many more of these winks, as I said, but the cake is definitely taken by the final one; President Hart is boinking an intern in a private study, and is discovered by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Hillary Rodham. She rushes to her office to call her husband, Bill Clinton, to tell him all about it.Are you serious?That dovetails into the next complaint about the narratives. The stories, despite the huge divergences, seem to want to gravitate back towards how things happened in our time. Sure, Bobby Kennedy may have been president in this version of history, (huge change..) but he also had recordings of conversations at the White House. The scandal doesn't develop, but it's there. Stunning! Ford beats Carter after all, but Reagan still ends up the candidate in 1980. He picks Sandra Day O'Connor as a running mate...which is also quite different. (Not to mention not at all possible for a guy like Reagan.) Huge divergence in strategy, history and personal character, but his speeches in this history end up being pretty much the same empty speeches the real Reagan gave. Just given at different times. Sometimes. The whole interest in reading alternate history is to get a sense of how different things would be...not see the same, familiar irritations of our time played out in almost the exact same way.Granted, people tend to remain somewhat constant. I grant this, and accept that even in alternate histories of our time, many of the key power brokers would probably remain the same. Nor is it unreasonable to draw on their papers and speeches to speculate on what they might say in another universe. But when they say the same things verbatim, or make the exact same mistakes, just three years later or earlier, it feels like a rehash of history, not an examination of a "stunning" alternate reality. (The Plot Against America had the same problem. But it diverged widely, at least for a while.)Oh, we get a few nods here and there towards just how different life would be. Such as the stunning revelation that M*A*S*H is a flop in a world where RFK wins the presidency, or that The Jeffersons has to change its name in the midst of a bad economy after Ford defeats Carter. But no true exploration of what it means to live in these worlds is offered. Instead, we get dry dissertations on alternate political machinations in alternate smokey black rooms; dry writing is dry writing in any dimension.When Greenfield does touch on huge alternate events, (like Gitmo being nuked by the Cubans) he glazes over them. In the above example, he mentions that it was a narrow escape, America entered a depression, and there were high rates of radiation poisoning in Florida. Just at the MOMENT this narrative becomes interesting and truly alternate, (with a nervous President Humphrey taking over for an incapacitated LBJ), it ends! Now THAT would have been alternate history...not simply seeing LBJ act like Uncle Cornpone in different rooms a few years earlier than he did in real life.The other two narratives ended at a similarly intriguing jumping off point, without exploring it more. Given the meticulous detail put into describing every southern primary in an alternate 1968, you'd think some time could be spent on the world that was created as a result. It all ends up being a finely researched and intricately carved stairway to nowhere.Never is this more true than in the highly anti-climactic end to the Reagan vs. Hart alternate...which spends about a million pages on the tiniest details of the end of said campaign, only to end with a hackneyed Monica Lewinsky joke.The operatives in the third and final alternate history mention how Gary Hart is too egg-headish and dry and not interesting and charismatic enough to be elected. I'd assess this book in the same way. It had promise, but ultimately is sunk by its own self importance and geeky fetishism for political minutia, paying little to no attention to character, plotting, prose or pacing. These alternative histories are very well written. The histories are pretty credible. The outcomes are based on some facts. Then, Greenfield extrapolates based on the facts at his disposal. For example, there was a person that really tried to blow up JFK prior to his innauguration. The firsrt story has that person succeeding. Then, Johnson becomes President much earlier. Also, many other historical figures are briefly glimpsed throughout the stories. It is historical fiction. But, it is written on a level that makes it seem closer to historical fact. It is worth reading. Do not skip the source material at the end. Greenfield meticulosly details where he got his ideas from.
What do You think about Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories Of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan (2011)?
I love "what if" history, especially when it very easily could have occurred; great book!
—Jill
Sooooo good! Will someone else please read this so we can discuss?
—shoppahovic
John killed in `60.Bobby lives in `68.Ford re-elected.
—Valerie
Only read the first 100 pages - too boring
—jessicanorton95
