Articles by Kevin Peraino
Everyone Was Fighting Fascism. Why Couldn’t They Get Along?
Everyone Was Fighting Fascism. Why Couldn’t They Get Along? In “A Shadow Over the World,” William I. Hitchcock shows how the early struggle against totalitarianism was rife with contradictions. Members of the Young People’s Socialist League of St. Louis at a protest in Missouri in the 1930s.Credit...Keystone/Getty Images Kevin Peraino is the author, most recently, of “A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949.” Sept. 12, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET A SHADOW OVER THE WORLD: Franklin D.
With the Third Reich at War, Most Berliners Just Carried On
Throughout the war years, Berliners turned looking away into an art form. They distracted themselves with movies and concerts and fashion shows. Some sought consolation in the supply of fine wines that had been liberated by the Germans from France; others found a way to wrangle rationed coffee and cakes. “For the right price, you can get anything you want,” the author Erich Kästner told his diary in the winter of 1941.
La cara oculta de Berlín durante la segunda guerra mundial: arte, fiestas y supervivencia
A los autócratas les gusta ser amados. En los primeros días de la invasión nazi a Polonia en 1939, los propagandistas alemanes alardeaban sobre la “apasionada devoción” de los berlineses por su Führer. Sin embargo, observadores atentos notaron una apatía inesperada que se asentó sobre la capital. El periodista estadounidense William Shirer, radicado en Berlín, reportó que no presenció “ninguna emoción, ningún hurra, ningún aplauso”. Ni siquiera detectó odio hacia los enemigos británicos y franceses.
With the Third Reich at War, Most Berliners Just Carried On
STAY ALIVE: Berlin, 1939-1945, by Ian Buruma Autocrats love to be loved. In the first days of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, German propagandists boasted of the “stormy passion” of Berliners for their Führer. Cleareyed observers, however, noted an unexpected ennui that had settled over the capital. The Berlin-based American journalist William Shirer reported that he witnessed “no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering.” Oddly, there was “not even hate” for the British and French enemies.
Por qué los británicos tenían miedo de ganar la Segunda Guerra Mundial
En los anales de los relatos sobre momentos cruciales, existen dos creencias persistentes: la primera, que el Reino Unido luchó con valentía “en solitario” tras la caída de Francia; la segunda, que el Nuevo Mundo finalmente acudió en auxilio del Viejo. El primer ministro británico Winston Churchill es el principal autor de este relato. En sus memorias, afirmó que no fue hasta Pearl Harbor cuando reconoció que Gran Bretaña sobreviviría al embate nazi.
Why the British Were Afraid of Winning World War II
Churchill museum at Westminister College is close to national landmark status After at least a decade of pushing its name to the forefront, Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., has taken a big step to securing national support.
Book Review: ‘Advance Britannia,’ by Alan Allport
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'The Troublemaker,' by Mark L. Clifford Original
"The Troublemaker" is a hagiography in the word's original sense: Though it does not entirely overlook Lai's warts, it ultimately presents its subject as a kind of living saint. Clifford is a former Hong Kong newspaper editor as well as a human rights advocate who served on the board of one of Lai's companies, and he emphasizes Lai's self-sacrifice and courage in his defense of democracy and economic freedom.
America's China war
Mr Rudd structures his book like a white paper or policy brief Topics BOOK REVIEW | Literature | US China THE AVOIDABLE WAR: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China Author: KevinRudd Publisher: PublicAffairs Price: $32 Pages: 432 Here is one way the American era could end: China, on a pretext or piqued by some provocation, orchestrates an invasion of Taiwan.
Are China and the United States on a Collision Course to War?
THE AVOIDABLE WAR The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China By Kevin Rudd Here is one way the American era could end: China, on a pretext or piqued by some provocation, orchestrates an invasion of Taiwan. Beijing launches a shower of missiles toward Taipei, crippling its American-supplied military, followed by attacks on Okinawa and Guam. More than 200,000 People’s Liberation Army troops climb ashore at 20 different beachheads along the Taiwanese coast.
When America’s Cold War Strategy Turned Corrupt (Published 2020)
nonfiction Edward LansdaleCredit...Edward Geary Lansdale Papers, Hoover Institution Archives Published Sept. 1, 2020Updated Sept. 2, 2020 THE QUIET AMERICANS Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War — a Tragedy in Three Acts By Scott Anderson Once upon a time, there was a nation that saw itself as a beacon to the world. It would lead, as John Quincy Adams put it, by the gentle power of its example.
Why We Keep Getting the Lessons of the Spanish Flu Wrong
People wear masks as they wait in line at Costco in Salt Lake City on Saturday. | Rick Bowmer/AP Photo Kevin Peraino is the author, most recently, of A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949, and is the executive director of the Jay Heritage Center. In the age of coronavirus, Americans are gripped by tales of the 1918 Spanish flu. Lessons from that past pandemic crowd the op-ed pages. Books about the contagion climb the best-seller lists.
A Force So Swift
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Winner of the 2018 Truman Book Award “Peraino’s absorbing study of the pivotal year in Chinese-American relations — when Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party came to power — shows how decisions made then have continued to affect relations between the two countries up to the present day.” –The New York Times Book Review “The intimate, blow-by-blow reconstruction of the story offers a vivid sense of what it must have been like for American policy...
10 New Books We Recommend This Week
We’re nearing the season for ghost stories — or, in the case of William Alexander’s new middle-grade novel, “A Properly Unhaunted Place,” un-ghost stories, cautionary tales about what happens when we try too hard to put our history behind us.
A Force So Swift by Kevin Peraino | PenguinRandomHouse.com
“A useful guide…The intimate, blow-by-blow reconstruction of the story offers a vivid sense of what it must have been like for American policy makers as they grappled…with the rapidly deteriorating situation in China….What Mr. Peraino does well is to capture a critical moment in the founding of what is today the most important bilateral relationship in the world and to show the dynamics that so often complicate the policy maker’s task at times of upheaval and revolution.” –The Wall Street...
From Truman to Trump: The Great Divide Over China
As tensions rise with North Korea, President Donald Trump appears poised to launch a diplomatic offensive aimed at Beijing. U.S. officials have said that Mr. Trump is likely to travel in November to China, which the Trump administration says holds the key to resolving the nuclear standoff with Kim Jong Un. Even Mr. Trump’s bluster—including his threat this week at the U.N. General Assembly to “totally destroy North Korea”—seems designed to try to scare Beijing into cracking down on Pyongyang.
In Korea crisis, history is a useful — and sobering — guide
In this undated photo from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, distributed by Korea News Service, mechanized units from the (North) Korean People’s Army enter the city of Taejon during the Korean War. (Photo: Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP Images) President Harry S. Truman was on vacation on the evening of June 24, 1950 — the last time war erupted on the Korean Peninsula.
Lincoln's Foreign Policy in Today's World
When we think about brilliant U.S. foreign-policy minds, we don't usually think of Abraham Lincoln -and he didn't either. "I don't know anything about diplomacy," he told one foreign envoy at the start of his first term. "I will be very apt to make blunders."
President Lincoln’s Twitter Mole
Like the White House twitter mole fired this week, President Lincoln had his own official leaking secrets and mocking him, Count Adam Gurowski. Kevin Peraino on the amusing parallels and what they reveal about secrecy and diplomacy. When the news broke this week that National Security Staff official Jofi Joseph had been fired for his acerbic, anonymous tweets as @natsecwonk, it was heralded as a new low in the annals of diplomatic privacy.
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