Robert Dallek has 8 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 13 ratings. The most-rated is Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Summary
A one-volume biography of Roosevelt by the number one New York Times best-selling biographer of JFK, focusing on his career as an incomparable politician, uniter, and deal maker In an era of such great national divisiveness, there could be no more timely biography of one of our greatest presidents than one that focuses on his unparalleled political ability as a uniter and consensus maker. Robert Dallek's Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions that have attracted all his biographers: How did a man who came from so privileged a background become the greatest presidential champion of the country's needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster revolutionary changes in the country's economic and social institutions? How did Roosevelt work such a profound change in the country's foreign relations? For FDR, politics was a far more interesting and fulfilling pursuit than the management of family fortunes or the indulgence of personal pleasure, and by the time he became president, he had commanded the love and affection of millions of people. While all Roosevelt's biographers agree that the onset of polio at the age of 39 endowed him with a much greater sense of humanity, Dallek sees the affliction as an insufficient explanation for his transformation into a masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms, initiate landmark reforms that changed the American industrial system, and transform an isolationist country into an international superpower. Dallek attributes FDR's success to two remarkable political insights. First, unlike any other president, he understood that effectiveness in the American political system depended on building a national consensus and commanding stable long-term popular support. Second, he made the presidency the central, most influential institution in modern America's political system. In addressing the country's international and domestic problems, Roosevelt recognized the vital importance of remaining closely attentive to the full range of public sentiment around policy-making decisions - perhaps FDR's most enduring lesson in effective leadership.
©2017 Robert Dallek (P)2017 Penguin Audio
An Unfinished Life
Summary
An Unfinished Life describes the birth of the Kennedy dynasty, the complexity of Jack's early years, and the mixture of adulation and resentment that tangled his relationships with his mother, Rose, and his father, Joseph. Forced into the shadow of his older brother, Joe, Jack struggled to find a place for himself until World War II, when he became a national hero and launched his career. Dallek reveals for the first time the full story of Kennedy's wartime actions and the true details of how Joe was killed, opening the door to Jack's ascendancy. Here is the gripping story of Jack's transformation from an awkward speaker into a brilliant politician with irresistible charm. The audiobook carries us from Jack's work as a senator from Massachusetts, through the fiercely contested 1960 campaign against Nixon, and takes us on to the White House itself. An Unfinished Life also discloses for the very first time that Kennedy was far sicker than we ever knew. While laboring to present an image of robust good health, Kennedy was secretly in and out of hospitals through-out his life, so ill that he was administered last rites on several different occasions. Here is a vivid portrait of a man who, because he knew how close he was to death, lived as much as he could - sometimes hurting others in the process. Never shying away from Kennedy's weaknesses, Dallek also brilliantly explores his strengths. The result is a portrait of a bold, brave, human Kennedy, once again a hero.
©2003 Robert Dallek (P)2003 Time Warner AudioBooks. A division of the AOL Time Warner Book Group.
Camelot's Court
Summary
Fifty years after John F. Kennedy's assassination, presidential historian Robert Dallek, whom The New York Times calls "Kennedy's leading biographer", delivers a riveting new portrait of this president and his inner circle of advisors, their rivalries, personality clashes, and political battles. In Camelot's Court, Dallek analyzes the brain trust whose contributions to the successes and failures of Kennedy's administration - including the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam - were indelible. Kennedy purposefully put together a dynamic team of advisors noted for their brilliance and acumen, including Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and trusted aides Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger. Yet the very traits these men shared also created sharp divisions. Far from being unified, this was an uneasy band of rivals whose ambitions and clashing beliefs ignited fiery internal debates. Robert Dallek illuminates a president deeply determined to surround himself with the best and the brightest, who often found himself disappointed with their recommendations. The result, Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House, is a striking portrait of a leader whose wise resistance to pressure and adherence to principle offers a cautionary tale for our own time.
©2013 Robert Dallek (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers
How Did We Get Here?
Summary
The award-winning, New York Times best-selling historian considers the vast array of triumphs and failures of America’s modern presidents that paved a path to Donald Trump, offering an understanding of our current moment and hope for a way back to true leadership. The struggle to preserve the Republic has never been easy or without perils. The rise of conflicting political parties, which the founders opposed, and President John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts repressing First Amendment rights made Franklin’s observation at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention - “a republic, if you can keep it” - seem prescient. In the 20th century, America endured numerous struggles: economic depression, World War II, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, the war in Iraq - all of which gave rise to demagogues, as did the growth and reach of mass media. But this wasn’t the Founding Fathers’ vision for our leadership. The resistance to putting a demagogue in the White House survived the anti-communist agitation of the 1950s and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. But the latter opened the way for Richard Nixon’s election in 1968 and Watergate, which again tested our democratic institutions and the rule of law. Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 moved Vice President Gerald Ford, his successor, to declare, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” But was it? Donald Trump’s 2016 election has presented a new challenge. How did past politics and presidential administrations pave the way for this current assault on American democracy? Our nation’s history provides reassurance that we will restore our better angels to government. Yet it must be considered that earlier administrations and public outlook facilitated the rise of such an un-presidential character as Trump in the first place. In How Did We Get Here?, Robert Dallek considers a century of modern administrations, from Teddy Roosevelt to today, shining a light on the personalities behind the politics and the voters who elected each. His cautionary tale reminds us that the only constant in history is change, but whether for good or ill the choice is Americans’ to make.
©2020 Robert Dallek (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Profiles in Leadership
Summary
The best historians in the land consider examples of great leadership, well known and surprising, from Washington to Willkie and more. What made FDR a more successful leader during the Depression crisis than Hoover? Why was Eisenhower more effective as supreme commander during World War II than he was as president? Why was Grant one of the best presidents of his day, if not in all of American history? What drove Bobby Kennedy into the scrum of electoral politics? Who was Pauli Murray and why was she one of the most decisive figures in the movement for civil rights? Find the surprising and revelatory answers to these questions and more in this collection of new essays by great historians, including Sean Wilentz, Alan Brinkley, Annette Gordon-Reed, Jean Strouse, Robert Dallek, Frances FitzGerald, and others. Entertaining and insightful individually, taken together the essays represent a valuable set of reflections on the enduring ingredients of leadership.
©2010 Walter Isaacson (P)2010 Random House Audio
Lost Peace
Summary
In a striking reinterpretation of the postwar years, Robert Dallek examines what drove the leaders of the most powerful and populous nations around the globe - Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Mao, de Gaulle, and Truman - to rely on traditional power politics despite the catastrophic violence their nations had endured. The decisions of these men, for better and often for worse, had profound consequences for decades to come, influencing relations and conflicts with China, Korea, in the Middle East, and around the globe. The Lost Peace is a penetrating look at the misjudgments that caused enormous strife and suffering during this critical period, from the closing months of World War II through the early years of the Cold War. From Hitler's killing program to Stalin's paranoia to Truman's decision to build hydrogen bombs, the men who led the world at this time executed astonishingly unwise actions that propelled the nuclear arms race and extended the Cold War. Dallek has written a cautionary tale that considers what might have been done differently to avoid the difficulties that strong and weak nations around the globe encountered in the mid-twentieth century. Provocative, illuminating, and based on a lifetime of research, The Lost Peace also offers extraordinary lessons for today's leaders who may learn from the mistakes that were made between 1945 and 1953 and help them achieve an era of greater international cooperation.
©2010 Robert Dallek (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers
Nixon and Kissinger
Summary
More than 30 years after working side by side in the White House, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger still stand as two of the most compelling, contradictory, and powerful American leaders of the second half of the 20th century. Both were largely self-made men, brimming with ambition, driven by their own inner demons, and often ruthless in pursuit of their goals. From January 1969 to August 1974, their collaboration and rivalry resulted in the making of foreign policy that would leave a defining mark on the Nixon presidency. Tapping into a wealth of recently declassified documents and tapes, Robert Dallek uncovers fascinating details about Nixon and Kissinger's tumultuous personal relationship and the extent to which they struggled to outdo each other in the quest for foreign policy achievements. With unprecedented detail, Dallek reveals Nixon's erratic behavior during Watergate and the extent to which Kissinger was complicit in trying to help Nixon use national security to prevent his impeachment or resignation. Illuminating, authoritative, revelatory, and utterly engrossing, Nixon and Kissinger provides a startling new picture of the immense power and sway these two men held in affecting world history.
©2007 Robert Dallek (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers
Harry S. Truman
Summary
He was the plainspoken man from Missouri who never expected to be president, yet rose to become one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. In April 1945, after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the presidency fell to a former haberdasher and clubhouse politician from Independence, Missouri. Many believed he would be overmatched by the job, but Harry S. Truman would surprise them all. Few chief executives have had so lasting an impact. Truman ushered America into the nuclear age, established the alliances and principles that would define the cold war and the national-security state, started the nation on the road to civil rights, and won the most dramatic election of the 20th century - his 1948 "whistlestop campaign" against Thomas E. Dewey. Robert Dallek, the best-selling biographer of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, shows how this unassuming yet supremely confident man rose to the occasion. Truman clashed with Southerners over civil rights, with organized labor over the right to strike, and with General Douglas MacArthur over the conduct of the Korean War. He personified Thomas Jefferson's observation that the presidency is a "splendid misery", but it was during his tenure that the United States truly came of age.
©2008 Robert Dallek (P)2008 Macmillan Audio