If Kennedy Had Lived

"What if . . .?" For historians the question can be a great parlor game, launching all-night arguments over what would have happened if, say, Hitler had got the Bomb or Pickett had not charged at Gettysburg. Nowadays one of the hottest questions involves speculating about what John Kennedy would have done in Vietnam had he not been killed in November 1963.

John M. Newman, a former U.S. Army major who teaches history at the University of Maryland, has entered this fray with a meticulously documented argument that Kennedy planned to withdraw from Vietnam had he been re-elected in 1964. Earnest...

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