Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat by Don Oberdorfer, Hardcover, 9781588341662 | Buy online at The Nile
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Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat

The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat

Author: Don Oberdorfer  

Senator Mike Mansfield was instrumental in pushing through some of the most influential legislation of the 20th century. His career as the longest serving majority leader is finally given its due in this biography.

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Summary

Senator Mike Mansfield was instrumental in pushing through some of the most influential legislation of the 20th century. His career as the longest serving majority leader is finally given its due in this biography.

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Description

"When I'm gone, I want to be forgotten," said Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana. While he lived a life that was truly unforgettable as one of America's most important and most admired public servants of the 20th century, Mansfield refused to write his memoirs and shunned the entreaties of would-be biographers. Nonetheless, he sat down with Don Oberdorfer for 32 interviews in the last three years of his long life, and helped to open closed government documents that cast light on what he did and said. Until now, his story has never been told in full. Here is the story of his hard-scrabble childhood in Montana, his service in the lowest ranks of every branch of the US military in and after World War I, and the improbable love affair with his future wife, Maureen, that lifted this eighth-grade dropout from the Butte, Montana, copper mines to academia and political prominence. In his 4 years in Congress - including his record-breaking tenure as Senate Majority Leader from 1961 to 1977 - Mansfield was deeply involved in the great events of his time with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford.After retiring from Congress, he served as a most unusual ambassador to Japan from 1977 to 1989 for Presidents Carter and Reagan, who agreed on little else except their esteem for Mansfield. From his first visit to China as a US Marine private in 1922, Mansfield was fascinated with Asia. Originally a strong supporter of US involvement in Vietnam, he later mounted valiant, solitary, and often confidential efforts - described in full here for the first time - to persuade Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon that the war in Indochina was a grave mistake that would bring only deaths and disaster to the United States. He had greater success in assisting Nixon to open US relations with the Peoples Republic of China, although Nixon ordered Henry Kissinger to "screw Mansfield" on a China issue when angered by the Majority Leader's refusal to interfere with a Senate investigation of administration wrong-doing. Due to the unbounded trust and moral authority accorded him by his fellow lawmakers - attributes that have nearly disappeared from today's political scene - Mansfield was able to establish by unanimous vote of both parties the Senate Watergate Committee that led to Nixon's resignation.In addition to far-reaching interviews with Mansfield, documentation from his voluminous archives and dozens of interviews with those who knew him well, Oberdorfer's account is based on extensive use of important new materials. He gained access to documents declassified for this book and secret tape recordings made by Presidents Johnson and Nixon in the White House. The result will change the way in which Mansfield's role and contemporary history itself is understood.

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Critic Reviews

“"Oberdorfer is one of America's keenest analysts of the international scene."-James A. Baker III, former”

“Oberdorfer is one of America’s keenest analysts of the international scene.”—James A. Baker III, former US Secretary of State

“Mike Mansfield, one of the great Americans of the twentieth century, had an epic life, from the copper mines of Butte to the center of power in Washington for four crucial decades. Don Oberdorfer has done justice to his subject, with a biography as solid and understated and praiseworthy as Mansfield himself.”—Washington Post

“There are parts of this fine new biography of Senator Mike Mansfield, as he pleads with Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson not to plunge America into war in Southeast Asia, that could break your heart. . . . This is a thorough biography of a public man who served longer as majority leader than any other.”—New York Times Book Review

“A luminous account of a public servant who was the epitome of integrity, a worthy tribute to its subject.”—Fred Greenstein, Director, Program in Leadership Studies, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

“Don Oberdorfer's magisterial biography matches the stature of the man.”—Sen. Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader

“What an extraordinary statesman, what an extraordinary biographer, what a spell-binding story.”—Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Research Professor and founder of Asia Center, Harvard University

“[An] extraordinarily well-researched portrait of a man at the center of so many tumultuous events. . . . [a] deep and probing biography.”—George P. Schultz, former U.S. Secretary of State

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About the Author

Don Oberdorfer is the author of The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History and was a National Book Award finalist for this book,

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Product Details

Publisher
Smithsonian Books
Published
31st October 2003
Pages
624
ISBN
9781588341662

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