Thurston Clarke Volgorde van de boeken (chronologisch)

Vijftig jaar na zijn dood is de legende van John F. Kennedy nog altijd springlevend. Dat komt door de grote verwachtingen die iedereen van hem had; het was een man die een uitzonderlijke belofte belichaamde. In de laatste honderd dagen was Kennedys persoonlijke en politieke leven in grote beroering. Hij verloor een kind, de Koude Oorlog was op zijn hoogtepunt, de burgerrechtenbeweging groeide en de Vietnamoorlog speelde al een belangrijke rol. In de laatste maanden van zijn leven nam hij bovendien een aantal baanbrekende politieke beslissingen. Hij erkende de invloed van Martin Luther King, tekende het kernproevenverdrag en twijfelde steeds meer aan de Amerikaanse militaire betrokkenheid in Vietnam. Had hij tijd van leven gehad, dan was die oorlog mogelijk eerder beëindigd. Thurston Clarke verklaart waarom het verdriet over de moord op JFK nog altijd voortduurt. De centrale vraag in De laatste honderd dagen van JFK is dan ook niet wie hem vermoordde, maar wie Kennedy op het moment van zijn dood was en wat zijn voltooide presidentschap voor Amerika en de wereld zou hebben betekend.

2013 is the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s assassination. A narrative of Kennedy's quest to create a speech that would distill American dreams and empower a new generation, Ask Not is a beautifully detailed account of the inauguration and the weeks preceding it. During a time when America was divided, and its citizens torn by fears of war, John F. Kennedy took office and sought to do more than just reassure the American people. His speech marked the start of a brief, optimistic era. Thurston Clarke's portrait of JFK is balanced, revealing the president at his most dazzlingly charismatic and cunningly pragmatic. Thurston Clarke's latest book, JFK's Last Hundred Days, is currently available in hardcover.

The definitive account of Robert Kennedy’s exhilarating and tragic 1968 campaign for president—a revelatory history that is especially resonant now After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Robert Kennedy—formerly Jack’s no-holds-barred political warrior—almost lost hope. He was haunted by his brother’s murder, and by the nation’s seeming inabilities to solve its problems of race, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Bobby sensed the country’s pain, and when he announced that he was running for president, the country united behind his hopes. Over the action-packed eighty-two days of his campaign, Americans were inspired by Kennedy’s promise to lead them toward a better time. And after an assassin’s bullet stopped this last great stirring public figure of the 1960s, crowds lined up along the country’s railroad tracks to say goodbye to Bobby. With new research, interviews, and an intimate sense of Kennedy, Thurston Clarke provides an absorbing historical narrative that goes right to the heart of America’s deepest despairs—and most fiercely held dreams—and tells us more than we had understood before about this complicated man and the heightened personal, racial, political, and national dramas of his times.

ISLOMANIA is not really about the famous fictional castaway at all - it is more about the place he was forced to make his temporary home, and other places like it. Renowned travel writer Thurston Clarke has long been obsessed with islands, an affliction he calls 'islomania', and his new book is a kind of love letter to these little (and not so little) worlds surrounded by sea. Beginning with the accepted model for Robinson Crusoe's remote abode, Mas à Tierra in the Pacific, Clarke then takes us on a hugely enjoyable tour of his favourite islands, exploring their geography, history and culture. From George Orwell's Jura, where he wrote '1984', to the beautiful (but slowly sinking) Maldives in the Indian Ocean, this is a book about some of the most curious and evocative places on earth. And over every island falls the shadow of Crusoe, persuading us that islands are more liberating than confining, more contemplative than lonely, more holy than barbaric . . .

Wie heeft nooit eens met zijn vinger de streep gevolgd die midden over de wereldkaart loopt? Thurston Clarke voegt de daad bij de droom als hij op zijn wereldreis de evenaar volgt. Op levendige wijze vertelt Clarke, van huis uit journalist, over de vele indrukken die hij opdeed en mensen die hij ontmoette in de ontwikkelingslanden aan de evenaar.

Wallenberg's life was an enigma. His fate of one of the great unsolved mysteries of World War II. He was a handsome, aristocratic young diplomat from neutral Sweden who saved 30,000 Jews from the jaws of the Nazi death machine - only to disappear, at the war's end, into the silent hell of Soviet Prison.