Michael Beschloss, long known as a fantastic presidential historian, captured a great deal of detail about the U-2 program and the subsequent crisis that erupted when Francis Gary Powers was shot down in this book.

The author begins with the development of the U-2 program and its necessity, and then the covert efforts by the CIA to evaluate what capabilities really did exist in the USSR for nuclear war. The level of involvement on the part of President Eisenhower did suprise me a little, especially the way in which the flights before the shootdown were somewhat routine, with Soviet complaints being easily dismissed. It is the shootdown, and the results both immediate and long-term, that dominate the majority of the book.

The timing could nothave been worse- it was the last scheduled flight before a summit between the two superpowers, and Khruschev was at the Moscow U.S. Embassy for an Independence Day celebration as the shootdown unfolded. The repercussions were potentially enormous, as the U.S. lost prestige, leverage, and the ability to continue to operate the program once it came to light.

Beschloss writes very well, and this early effort of his is certainly worth the time it will take to find it and read it.

Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (1986)(Michael R. Beschloss 1955-)

The major conclusion I came to was that it is probable both Eisenhower and Khrushchev wanted a period of at least limited détente. Because of their own miscalculations about each other's behavior, that moment was lost. -Michael Beschloss

In the Spring of 1960, as President Eisenhower neared the end of his successful but uneventful presidency, he devoutly wished to cap off his career with a successful summit with the Soviet Union. Having met with Khrushchev the previous year and established the "Spirit of Camp David", he envisioned forging a sort of détente and entering into some kind of arms treaty, perhaps a test ban, at a May meeting with the Soviet Premier in Paris. But on May 1, 1960--celebrated as May Day in Europe and a holiday of great import in the Soviet Union--American pilot Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 spy plane were shot down over Russian territory. The plane, on it's way from Peshawar, Pakistan to Bodo, Norway, would have been flying at an altitude of about 70,000 feet. Russian SAMs had been steadily improving their range, and the danger of a shootdown was well understood at the highest levels of American government, in fact the President had ordered that he be given the right of final approval for each flight, but in that pre satellite era the spy planes were providing nearly all U.S. intelligence on the state of Russia's military, so Ike concluded that were worth the very high risk. Moreover, the flights were done under CIA command, not the military, pilots had orders to commit suicide if shot down and neither they nor identifiable portions of the planes were expected to survive anyway, so the U.S. expected to maintain deniability. The Eisenhower Administration did in fact initially deny that the U-2 was a spy plane, claiming it was a weather flight that blew off course. In the event, Powers survived and Khrushchev, struggling to hold off "hard-liners" at home, chose to inflate the incident into a major provocation and, although the two sides went ahead with the Paris summit, it quickly degenerated into a diplomatic mess and the opportunity for a reduction in Cold War tensions was lost for a generation.

Michael Beschloss, who is a national treasure as regards study of the presidency, has done a masterful job of reconstructing the events surrounding the U-2 Affair. He really brings the period and it's tensions to life, particularly the internal functioning of the Eisenhower administration. To me, the most significant aspect of the book is Beschloss's argument that it was thanks to the spying of the U-2 that Eisenhower understood how weak the Soviets actually were and that Ike and Khrushchev basically had an implicit understanding that if the Soviet did not make a real effort to upgrade their sorry military capacity, the U.S. would act as if the Soviets posed a threat. This allowed Ike to reign in the Military-Industrial Complex and balance the Federal budget, while at the same time permitting Khrushchev to swagger around the world stage as if the Soviets were our military equals. True or not, this portrait comports with the image which has emerged in recent years of Eisenhower as a much more deft and nuanced leader than was previously understood to be the case.

Since this book was written before the fall of the Soviet Union, it is likely that someone taking a fresh look at the affair, particularly someone with access to Soviet archives, will have much detail to add to the Russian side of the story. But it is hard to imagine someone producing any more readable an account of the whole incident. If I have one reservation with the book, it is that Beschloss does not consider the broader question of whether detente was a good idea in and of itself. Few would any longer argue that the final demise of the Evil Empire came only after they had stretched themselves to the limit. A fuller discussion of what detente might have meant for the internal situation in Russia would have been helpful. I'd be interested to know whether Beschloss thinks it would have weakened Communist control, which I doubt, or enabled them to devote more resources to productive domestic industries and thereby strenthened the regime's long term prospects.

At any rate, it's an excellent book and a really fascinating look at the Eisenhower presidency. This one is most recommended. Unfortunately, it's also out of print, so by all means take advantage of the out of print service above or try your your library, but it's worth tracking down.

GRADE: A

Well written and detailed information about what could have sent us into war.

This was required reading for my Russian literature class because it is considered a classic. My favorite part of this book is the fact that it gives the reader a glimpse of what life was like for the average nobleman of the day...(in the 1850's) It has some interesting descriptions of Russian family life, the life of the peasantry and how the younger generation interacted with the older generation (hence the title, "Fathers and Sons" although the original Russian is called "Fathers and Children"). One of the main characters, Bazarov, is a self proclaimed nihilist who rejects all forms of authority, causing problems for the older generations (his parents & his friend's parents), but attracting the attention of the people of his (the younger) generation. This book has no real plot...it is merely the story of how one man brings his nihilist ideas into other peoples' lives & it gives accounts of everybody else's reactions to these nihilist ideas. It is an interesting book & a pretty quick read, but it can drag in places...especially if the reader is waiting for something interesting to happen. All in all, I believe this book is worth reading, if just to get a taste of "Old Russia", but if you are looking for an exciting "can't-put-it-down-sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-page-turner", you won't find it in this book.

This book is known mostly, perhaps, for the character of Bazarov, widely considered the vanguard of nihilism in literature, especially in Russia. Bazarov is a significant fact of fiction, a sketch of the young middle class intellegentsia developing in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Brash, self-confident, iconoclastic, educated young men like Bazarov were popping up all over Russia. Turgenev finds a way to tie this into a rich tapestry of love, familial relationships, and simplicity that Arkady and Bazarov, the young men, succumb to. Even in his determination to change the world by destroying it so it can be rebuilt, Bazarov does not overcome the strong bonds of family. Love and family has the sort of redemptive power found so often in War and Peace, and indeed, Turgenev writes from a similar perspective and on a similar wavelength as Tolstoy. This book, while not big on plot, is to be appreciated for blending its simple prose with a poetic passion in showing how love between fathers and sons is ageless, and love between men and women occurs. I found the last passage very moving.

One of the most eloquent works in Russian literature, Fathers and Sons has had a major influence on subsequent Russian writers. Turgenev weaves so much into this short novel. As the title suggests he is dealing principally with generational differences, but ultimately this is a book about finding yourself in the world. In Bazarov, we have the ultimate nihilist, someone who renounces all societal conventions, which his peers utterly fail to understand. As a young doctor he has turned his back on noble society. We see some of his old feelings briefly rise to the surface in a romance which he pursues, but Bazarov chooses to extinguish those feelings, and return to his paternal home, where he ultimately seals his fate.

Turgenev is the bridge between the Russian writers of the early 19th century and the later 19th century. In many ways, Fathers and Sons reminded me of the theme which Lermontov explored in "A Hero of Our Time," and Turgenev appears in Dostoevsky's work, even if deliberately as a caricature.