In academic studies, we have a great term of "counter factory" to describe the "what-if" situation, practical exercises in thinking strategy, developing reliable responses to potential military and political scenarios Use it. Your taxes spend hundreds of exercises every year in the Pentagon. Certainly, there is a branch point of a long-term plan called scenario analysis. Scenario analysis is based on the premise of building an overall chain of discussion, point / counterpoint analysis and scenario analysis. Future - And we better give them some thought and prepare for them.
If this is too abstract, let's consider some examples that Jeff Greenfield is proud of 43 - Goa Beat Bush, Political Fables, It has recently been published as Kindle Single at Amazon. Green field, familiar to television viewers as commentator and known for quiet and intelligent voice at network news show, calls his work a chapter of "House of Alternative History" and he calls it some of the house I will take you to the room:
Sunday in December 1960, Jacqueline Kennedy never went out on Sunday in December, Greenfield said the suicide bombers parked outside Kennedy's house to welcome her husband to the church caused dynamite, John · Kennedy was killed before becoming a clerk Lyndon Johnson was in command of the Cuban missile crisis with a completely different understanding of foreign policy and power diplomacy from him. "
Another jewel cooked by Greenfield is as follows. "Brother-in-law of Robert Kennedy entered the ballroom of a hotel in Los Angeles early in the evening in 1968, Kennedy, Sylhan Sillhan Kennedy and his presidential election campaign survived and won victory." .
The last one: "At the moment of major discussion in 1976, President Gerald Ford forgot Polish control of the Soviet Union, an election that changed Carter Ford's achievement, avoiding intense weekly pain.
Although there is a long tradition in the novel, Greenfield reminds me of this "idea of something" for centuries. It is a novelist's classic tool for creating plots that are deeply involved in the reader. Let Philip Roth think Plot against the USA Among them, astronauts and national hero Charles Lindbergh have been executed, winning the presidential election, causing disastrous results from the temptation by Nazi engineers. Another set of novels that are not of the same literary quality as Ross Harris, but are written in a somewhat similar basic plotting framework Motherland And Philip K. Dick's Takagi people, Both fictional descriptions of the Nazi victory in World War II, the victory the whole world was absorbed into the third empire of the nightmare.
We all believe that history is not definitive. If Oswald missed, the world surely was different. If John Wilks Booth had missed, the world would certainly be different. And, if Goa defeated Bush in 2000, how did the world change?
Well, I think that it was a different story from another place, but that was such a close place. I personally remember that fight and I was deeply interested in Greenfield's promise. Soon, I read his book and glued it to my Kindle. A small sample of the Kindle site to unravel your appetite without giving anything to ruin the story:
Al - Gore, President Al Gore, on 9 September 2001, Texas Governor George W. Bush flew to Washington on an airplane in Dallas, a competition where the presidential election a few months ago was lost After the end, I returned to the capital for the first time.
Is not it the way you remember it?
If the appearance of the 2000 presidential election is different, and Mr. Al Gore defeated Bush and became the 43rd President of the United States, how did the incident occur? Will Osama bin Laden line up on a large scale? Is the attack on September 11 worse further? Did we invade Iraq? Did the economy fall into a recession? "
Some readers said that Jeff Greenfield wrote a wonderful book in its ancient times before the e-book Then everything changed, the splendid replacement history of American politics Putnam published "Dead Tree Technology" in 2011. "Speculation is not a history, but it is perfect for critics like Jeff Greenfield" Weekly for publishers That achievement is a book that creates a new sideline for talented Greenfield and adds to the work of real-time news analysis on live TV.
It is a work of Greenfield as a journalist for thirty years, and in reality there is plausibility in his complex other history. In this genre, I imagine that everything is lost unless the reader immediately senses the sense of its relevance, but I created Greenfield's exciting scenario, read the current winner of Greenfield, 43 - Goa Beat Bush, Political Fables, A real version of the history actually presented by Greenfield was visible More persuasive Rather than the history I remembered from the fact that I saw the TV living alive after I was personally perceived 13 years ago,
It will be unfair to say more about the story line to Greenfield and potential readers of this little gemstone. Keep in mind that Jeff Greenfield has taken up Beltline's politics since the 1980s. He is a very cool, restless analytic character. He does not have to ask "stop your distrust" in order to borrow the term of John Gardner about that action, which is needed when voluntarily entering the hypothetical world of others. Only the Greenfield seized you, you are a believer. Indeed, all his fictional history versions look realistic.
43 - Goa Beat Bush, Political Fable It is available on the Amazon Web site. This is a short book, but not about a full-length novel, about 100 pages of the material of the "dead tree" equivalent to a very long reading of 1 night, perhaps burning late night oil, or 2 nights reading, If you have to hide the light and turn off the light at a reasonable time.
Jeff Greenfield, one of America's most respected political analysts, has been spending over 30 years on network TV as a commentator on CNN, ABC News, CBS and now as a PBS anchor I need to know . It is the 5th winner of the Emmy Awards and is a political columnist of Yahoo News, writing dozens of books. He moves between New York and Santa Barbara.
