- Potomac Books
John F. Kennedy: World Leader
Key Metrics
- Stephen G Rabe
- Potomac Books
- Hardcover
- 9781597971478
- 9 X 6.3 X 1.2 inches
- 1.2 pounds
- History > United States - 20th Century
- English
Book Description
As Stephen G. Rabe explains in this introduction to American foreign policy at the height of the Cold War, Kennedy perceived himself as a foreign policy president. Time and again, the president used the threat of force, good diplomacy, and sound judgment to keep the world from falling into the abyss of nuclear war. But Kennedy did more than manage foreign policy crises. He launched major economic development programs for Latin America, India, and Egypt and dispatched Peace Corps volunteers around the world. He attempted to mediate the Arab-Israeli dispute and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to China and Israel. Under Kennedy, the United States began for the first time to develop a policy for Africa.
Taking a fresh look at Kennedy's wide-ranging efforts to change the world, Rabe devotes chapters to U.S. relations with the Soviet Union, Cuba, Latin America, and Vietnam. The author also evaluates Kennedy's approach to India, China, Egypt, and Israel and such African nations as Algeria, Angola, and South Africa. Rabe concludes by exploring whether Kennedy was contemplating a new approach toward the Soviet Union, one that, had Kennedy lived to see reelection, might have soon ushered in the era of d�tente.
Author Bio
Professor of history Stephen Rabe held the Ashbel Smith Chair in History at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he taught for forty years. He won three awards for distinguished teaching. He has written or edited eleven books, including John F. Kennedy: World Leader (2010) and The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America, 2nd ed. ( 2016). His Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (1988) won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His new project, Kissinger and Latin America, will be published by Cornell University Press.
Rabe has taught or lectured in twenty countries, conducting seminars on modern U.S. history in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. He has also served as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College, Dublin in Ireland and the Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
Education
PhD: History, University of Connecticut, 1977
MA: History, University of Connecticut, 1972
BA: History, Hamilton College, 1970
Source: University of Oregon
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