The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century

8vo, hardcover in dj, 689. Henry Wallace is the most important, and certainly the most fascinating, almost-president in American history. As FDRís third-term vice president, and a hero to many progressives, he lost his place on the 1944 Democratic ticket in a wild open convention, as a result of which Harry Truman became president on FDRís death. Books, films, and even plays have since portrayed the circumstances surrounding Wallaceís defeat as corrupt, and the results catastrophic. Filmmaker Oliver Stone, among others, has claimed that Wallaceís loss ushered in four decades of devastating and unnecessary Cold War. Now, based on striking new finds from Russian, FBI, and other archives, Benn Steilís The World That Wasnít paints a decidedly less heroic portrait of the man, of the events surrounding his fall, and of the world that might have been under his presidency. Though a brilliant geneticist, Henry Wallace was a self-obsessed political figure, blind to the manipulations of aidesómany of whom were Soviet agents and assets. From 1933 to 1949, Wallace undertook a series of remarkable interventions abroad, each aimed at remaking the world order according to his evolving spiritual blueprint. As agriculture secretary, he fell under the spell of Russian mystics, and used the cover of a plant-gathering mission to aid their doomed effort to forge a new theocratic state in Central Asia. As vice president, he toured a Potemkin Siberian continent, guided by undercover Soviet security and intelligence officials who hid labor camps and concealed prisoners. He then wrote a book, together with an American NKGB journalist source, hailing the regionís renaissance under Bolshevik leadership. In China, the Soviets uncovered his private efforts to coax concessions to Moscow from Chiang Kai-shek, fueling their ambitions to dominate Manchuria. Running for president in 1948, he colluded with Stalin to undermine his governmentís foreign policy, allowing the dictator to edit his most important election speech. It was not until 1950 that he began to acknowledge his misapprehensions regarding the Kremlinís aims and conduct. Meticulously researched and deftly written, The World That Wasnít is a spellbinding work of political biography and narrative history that will upend how we see the making of the early Cold War.