Booklist: Known and Unknown, A Memoir, by Donald Rumsfeld

Known and Unknown: A Memoir, by Donald Rumsfeld
Sentinel, 2011
730 pages plus 48 pages of photos, notes and index

Description
Few Americans have spent more time near the center of power than Donald Rumsfeld. Now he has wriiten an unflinching memoir of his half-century career, sharing previously undiscosed details that will fascinate readers and force historians to rethink many controversies.

Starting from a middle-class childhood in Illinois, Rumsfeld had a rapid rise that won him earrly acclaim. He shows us what it was like growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, going to Princeton on scholarships, serving as a naval aviator, then getting his first political job on Capitol Hill during the Eisenhower administration. He recalls how he won a seat in the House of Representatives at age thirty and what he experienced as a Congressman in Congress during the Kennedy and Johnson years.

We also follow him back to the executive branch as he took on key cabinet positions in the Nixon and Ford administrations, including his service as the youngest-ever Secretary of Defense, just after the trauma of Vietnam. And we learn about the challenges he later faced as a CEO in the private sector and during his special assignments for President REagan, including a face-to-fae meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983.

All of that would have been enough material for a fascinating book. But as 2001 began, Rumsfeld's greatest challenges lay ahead of him. At 68, he returned to the Pentagon as President Bush's secretary of defense, with a mandate to transform the military for a new century. Just nine months later he would confront the worst acts of terrorism in American history, followed by unexpected wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he would be on the firing line for many controversies, from the revalations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison to allegations of torture at Guantamano Bay.

Known and Unknown reveals what happened behind the scenes during the critical moments of the Bush years, as the President's inner circle debated how best to defend our country. It is based not only on Rumsfeld's memory but also on hundreds of previously unreleased docuiments from throughout his career. It also features his blunt, first-hand opinions about some of the world's best-known figures, from Margaret Thatcher to Elvis Presley, from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, and about each American president from Dwight S. Eisenhower to GEorge W. Bush.

In a famous press briefing, Rumsfeld once remarked that "there are also unknown unknowns...thing we do not know we don't know." His book makes us realize just how much we didn't know.

Table of Contents
Author's Note
Part 1: Lessons in Terror
1. Smiling Death
2. Into the Swamp
Part 2: An American, Chicago Born
3. The Last of Spring
4. The Longest of Long Shos
Part 3: The US Congress: From Camelot to Quagmire
5. "Here, sir, the people govern"
6. Young Turks
Part 4: In Nixon's Arena
7. 1968: The Year of Turmoil
8. The Job that Couldn't Be Done
9. Counsellor
10. NATO and Nixon's Fall
Part 5: Javelin Catcher: Inside the Ford White House
11. Restoring Trust
12. A Rocky Start
13. An Agonizing REappraisal
Part 6: Fighting the Cold WAr
14. Unfinished Business
15. Turning on the Lights
16. Hold the SALT: Tension over Detente
17. The 1976 Defeat
Part 7: Back to Reality
18. Searle's Sweet Success
19. From Malaise to Morning in America
20. Our Rural Period, Interupted
Part 8: Leaning Forward
21. Here We Go Again
22. Dogs Don't Bark at Parked Cars
23. Bears in the Woods
24. The National Security Council
25. The Agony of Surprise
26. War President
Part 9: Into the GRaveyard of Empires
27. Special Operations
28. Little Birds in a Nest
29. Kabul Falls, Karzai Rises
Part 10: Saddam's Miscalculation
30. Out of the Box
31. The Case for Regime Change
32. A Failure of Diplomacy
33. Exit the Butcher of Baghdad
Part 11: The Occupation of Iraq
34. Catastrophic Success
35. Mission Accomplished?
36. Too Many Hands on the Steering Wheel
37. Liberation from the Occupation
Part 12: WArtime Detention
38. The Least Worst Place
39. The Twentieth Hijacker
40. Law in a Time of War
41. The Road Not Travelled
Part 13: Pulling on our Boots: Challenges and Controversies Beyond the War Zones
42. Katrina and the Challenge of New Institutions
43. Gardening
44. The Army We Had
Part 14: The Long, Hard Slog
45. Hands off the Bicycle Street
46. The Dead Enders
47. Eyes on Afghanistan
48. Iraq's Summer of Violence
49. Farewells
50. After Tidesand Hurricanes
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
List of Illustrations
Notes
Index


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In the interests of Order and Method: My Schedule of Regular Posts:
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day*
Monday through Friday througout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.