The process of nominating two persons who will ultimately compete for the presidency is long, complicated, exhausting, and expensive. The 1988 presidential primary campaigns were no exception, as Democratic and Republican candidates spent countless hours and millions of dollars to win votes and delegates in caucuses and primaries across the country. Speeches, debates, and media advertisements helped spread the candidates' messages and policies to the voters. A different, fresh, and informative forum for each of the candidates was introduced by the Kennedy School of Government in "Candidates '88," a series of live, hour-long interviews with Marvin Kalb followed by questions from the audience of Harvard faculty and students. Broadcast nationally by PBS, this highly praised series made an important contribution to the presidential selection process and had a significant impact on the voters' understanding of the 1988 campaign, the candidates, and the issues.

Now the complete interviews have been collected in "Candidates '88," a volume that captures the substantive, revealing, and lively conversations between Marvin Kalb and the candidates. The book includes an insightful introduction by Marvin Kalb in which he examines the special political climate of 1988; explores why George Bush was the only candidate who decided not to participate in "Candidates '88"; discusses the power of the camera, the most coddled and cherished piece of technology in the history of presidential politics; and reflects on the problems of the nominating process and the need for reform. The volume also includes brief political biographies of all of the candidates written by Hendrik Hertzberg.

Marvin Kalb, former CBS Moscow bureau chief, traces how the Crimea of Catherine the Great became a global tinder box. The world was stunned when Vladimir Putin invaded and seized the seaport region of Crimea in March 2014. In the weeks that followed, separatist rebels aided by Russia took over territory in the area surrounding Crimea in eastern Ukraine. The United States and its Western allies immediately imposed strict sanctions on Russia and have continued to tighten those sanctions. This sharp deterioration in East-West relations has raised basic questions about the policies of Vladimir Putin and the future of Russia. Marvin Kalb, who reported from Russia in the 1950s for Edward R. Murrow and served as the CBS Moscow bureau chief in the early 1960s, argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Putin did not "suddenly" decide to invade Crimea and then instigate a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine. He had been waiting for the right moment in the months after Ukrainians rose up in bloody protests against the pro-Russian president in Kiev's Maidan Square. Those demonstrations had led Putin to the conclusion that Ukraine's opposition constituted an existential threat to Russia. Imperial Gamble examines how Putin reached that conclusion by taking a critical look at the recent political history of post-Soviet Russia. It also journeys deeper into the Russian past to more fully explain the roots of Russian nationalism that drives both Putin and the Russian people who support his actions in Ukraine. Kalb argues that the post-cold war world today hangs on the resolution of the Ukraine crisis. So long as it is treated as a problem to be resolved by Russia, on the one side, and the United States and Europe, on the other, it will remain a danger zone with global consequences. The only sensible solution lies in both Russia and Ukraine recognizing that their futures are irrevocably linked by the geography, power, politics, and history that Kalb brings to life in Imperial Gamble.

A personal journey through some of the darkest moments of the cold war and the early days of television news.Marvin Kalb, the award-winning journalist who has written extensively about the world he reported on during his long career, now turns his eye on the young man who became that journalist. Chosen by legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow to become one of what came to be known as the Murrow Boys, Kalb in this newest volume of his memoirs takes readers back to his first days as a journalist, and what also were the first days of broadcast news. Kalb captures the excitement of being present at the creation of a whole new way of bringing news immediately to the public. And what news. Cold War tensions were high between Eisenhower's America and Khrushchev's Soviet Union. Kalb is at the center, occupying a unique spot as a student of Russia tasked with explaining Moscow to Washington and the American public. He joins a cast of legendary figures along the way, from Murrow himself to Eric Severeid, Howard K. Smith, Richard Hottelet, Charles Kuralt, and Daniel Schorr among many others. He finds himself assigned as Moscow correspondent of CBS News just as the U2 incident-the downing of a US spy plane over Russian territory-is unfolding. As readers of his first volume, The Year I Was Peter the Great, will recall, being the right person, in the right place, at the right time found Kalb face to face with Khrushchev. DATELINE MOSCOW sees Kalb once again an eyewitness to history-and a writer and analyst who has helped shape the first draft of that history.

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In 1963 Marvin Kalb observed the Secret Service escorting an attractive woman into a hotel for what was most likely a rendezvous with President Kennedy. Kalb, then a news correspondent for CBS, didn't consider the incident newsworthy. Thirty-five years later, Kalb watched in dismay as the press dove headfirst into the scandal of President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, disclosing every prurient detail. How and why had the journalistic landscape shifted so dramatically? One Scandalous Story seeks to answer this critical question through the inside story of thirteen days -- January 13-25, 1998 -- that make up a vital chapter in the history of American journalism. In riveting detail, Kalb examines just how the media covered the Lewinsky scandal, offering what he calls an "X-ray of the Washington press corps." Drawing on hundreds of original interviews, Kalb allows us to eavesdrop on the incestuous deals between reporters and sources, the bitter disagreements among editors, the machination of moguls for whom news is Big Business, and above all, the frantic maneuvering to break the story. With fresh insight, he retraces decisions made by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Internet renegade Matt Drudge, Jackie Judd of ABC, Clinton-basher Lucianne Goldberg, Susan Schmidt of The Washington Post, Jackie Bennett of the Office of the Independent Counsel, and other key players in this scandal that veered from low comedy to high drama. Through the lens of those thirteen turbulent days, Kalb offers us a portrait of the "new news" in all its contradictions. He reveals how intense economic pressures in the news business, the ascendancy of the Internet, the blurring of roles between reporters and commentators, and a surge of dubious sourcing and "copy-cat journalism" have combined to make tabloid-style journalism increasingly mainstream. But are we condemned to a resurgence of "yellow journalism"? Painstakingly documented and sobering in its conclusions, One Scandalous Story issues a clarion call to newsmakers and the American public alike: "Journalism can change for the better -- and must."

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These candid conversations capture the difficulties of reporting during crisis and war, particularly the tension between government and the press. The participants include distinguished journalists -American and foreign, print and broadcast -and prominent public officials, past and present. They illuminate the struggle to balance free speech and the right to know with the need to protect sensitive information in the national interest. As the Information Age collides with the War on Terrorism, that challenge becomes even more critical and daunting. "We are very careful in what we talk about publicly. We do not want to paint a picture for the bad guys. So we don't talk very much at all about what we're going to do going forward." -Victoria Clarke, Department of Defense "This was a war that was very different. It was conducted primarily by about 200 to 250 special forces soldiers on the ground. There were no reporters with those soldiers until after the fall of Kandahar, until the war was essentially over. There were no eyes and ears, and that's the way the Pentagon wants it." -John McWethy, ABC News "I covered Capitol Hill for a very long time and was always astounded by the nonpolitical motivation of a lot of people that are up there who really do want to make the world better, want to make the U.S. better. So don't come away believing that because there are political implications that there are always political motivations." -Candy Crowley, CNN "There is a feeling among the community, Muslim Americans, and also overseas that we might become the new enemy. But so far nobody knows whether it is just because of the war or if it's going to last." -Hafez Al-Mirazi, Al-Jazeera Cosponsored with the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School, Harvard University.

The United States had never lost a war --that is, until 1975, when it was forced to flee Saigon in humiliation after losing to what Lyndon Johnson called a "raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country." The legacy of this first defeat has haunted every president since, especially on the decision of whether to put "boots on the ground" and commit troops to war.

In "Haunting Legacy," the father-daughter journalist team of Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb presents a compelling, accessible, and hugely important history of presidential decisionmaking on one crucial issue: in light of the Vietnam debacle, under what circumstances should the United States go to war?

The sobering lesson of Vietnam is that the United States is not invincible --it can lose a war --and thus it must be more discriminating about the use of American power. Every president has faced the ghosts of Vietnam in his own way, though each has been wary of being sucked into another unpopular war. Ford (during the "Mayaguez" crisis) and both Bushes (Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan) deployed massive force, as if to say, "Vietnam, be damned." On the other hand, Carter, Clinton, and Reagan (to the surprise of many) acted with extreme caution, mindful of the Vietnam experience. Obama has also wrestled with the Vietnam legacy, using doses of American firepower in Libya while still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The authors spent five years interviewing hundreds of officials from every post war administration and conducting extensive research in presidential libraries and archives, and they've produced insight and information never before published. Equal parts taut history, revealing biography, and cautionary tale, "Haunting Legacy" is must reading for anyone trying to understand the power of the past to influence war-and-peace decisions of the present, and of the future.