Peter Collier

“What’s the point of being Irish anyway if you don’t think the world will break your heart?” asks Jack Kennedy. He is spellbound by a song about Ireland’s neverland of dreams: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” No one better knew the real JFK’s dreams and passions than Lem Billings, a prep-school roommate who made himself “sidekick everlasting.” The late Peter Collier had the great fortune to obtain oral histories from Billings himself, and they became the basis for a vivid biographical novel in Lem’s voice. On assignment with the Hearst newspapers, Jack goes with Lem to Hollywood, that neverland of dreams he loves for “the feeling that something might happen.” Things do. Communists and gangsters vie for control of the film industry. There are labor strikes, blackmail, assassinations. And there are glamorous actresses. Joseph Kennedy Sr. hovers oppressively over his son and aims to derail his romance with Valentina, survivor of an Italian prison camp and daughter of a mobster. The world breaks Jack’s heart, and he dives into politics with steely purpose. But the interlude in Hollywood sends ripples through the Kennedys’ lives. When Lem gets the news of JFK’s assassination, he instantly thinks of Val’s father—a man whose middle name is vendetta. Billings never got the answers he sought about Jack’s death. As for his intimate knowledge of the Kennedys, he remained ever discreet, but left a trove of recollections to be opened by a later generation. Channeled through Collier’s lively and imaginative prose, they illuminate shadowy corners of an extraordinary American saga.

In The Fords: An American Epic, Peter Collier and David Horowitz tell the riveting story of three generations of Fords, a dramatic story of conflict between fathers and sons played out against the backdrop of America’s greatest industrial empire. The story begins with the first Henry Ford, the mechanical wizard, tinkerer and “mad genius” who drove the automobile into the heart of American life and conquered the world with it. An American Original, by the end of his life he had become an embittered crank who so possessively loved the company he built that when his son, Edsel, tried to change it to suit the changing times, Henry destroyed him. It was left to Edsel’s son Henry II to avenge him and save the Ford Motor Company in the postwar world. From the details of the first Henry’s illicit affair and illegitimate son, to the life and loves of “Hank the Deuce” and his celebrated feud with Lee Iacocca, this is an engrossing account of a vital chapter in American history. The authors have added new material to this classic work, showing how Henry II’s line lost out to the line of his brother William Clay Ford in the quest to control this most American of companies in the twenty-first century.In addition to The Fords, Peter Collier and David Horowitz are the authors of dynastic biographies of the Kennedys, Roosevelts, Rockefellers, and Fondas.

The Kennedys may well be the most photographed, written about, talked about, admired, hated, and controversial family in American history. But for all the words and pictures, the real story was not told until Peter Collier and David Horowitz spent years researching archives and interviewing both family members and hundreds of people close to the Kennedys.An immediate classic, The Kennedys combines intimate knowledge with a perspective free of obligations to family loyalties and myths, bringing the story of four generations of “America’s family” fully into view. Collier and Horowitz capture the strain of ambition; the dynastic ebb and flow; the invention of a mythic identity; the corrosive underside of the dream of Camelot—developed over four generations—that led one young Kennedy to say, “We broke the rules and in turn we were broken by them.”The Kennedys: An American Drama is a fascinating and brilliantly comprehensive history that brings together, for the first time, all the complex strains of the story of the Kennedys’ rise and fall. The authors have added new material showing the effect of the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., and the other family tragedies of the last few years, on the Kennedys and their mythic role in American life.In addition to The Kennedys, Peter Collier and David Horowitz are the authors of dynastic biographies of the Fords, Roosevelts, Rockefellers, and Fondas.

An updated edition of the New York Times bestseller, featuring 12 new recipients and a new foreword by Bradley Cooper Eight veterans from the war in Afghanistan have been awarded our nation’s highest honor for valor in combat since the publication of the third edition of Medal of Honor, including Edward C. Byers, Jr., the newest living recipient and a member of Navy SEAL Team Six, and Clint Romesha, author of the New York Times bestselling Red Platoon. And nearly 50 years after their service, four Vietnam veterans have also since received the recognition they so richly deserve. Now these men rightly take their place in the pages of this revised and updated edition. Included here are 156 Medal of Honor recipients, captured with a contemporary portrait by award-winning photographer Nick Del Calzo and profiled in moving text by National Book Award nominee Peter Collier. The men in the book fought in conflicts from World War II to Afghanistan, served in every branch of the armed services, and represent a cross section as diverse as America itself. This is their ultimate record.

Riveting real-life accounts of heroism from Medal of Honor recipients, including Clinton Romesha (author of Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor) and exceptional civilians like schoolteacher Jencie Fagan How does an ordinary person become a hero? It happens in a split second, a moment of focus and clarity, when a choice is made. Here are the gripping accounts of Medal of Honor recipients who demonstrated guts and selflessness on the battlefield and confronted life-threatening danger to make a difference. There are the stories of George Sakato and Vernon Baker—both of whom overcame racial discrimination to enlist in the army during World War II (Sakato was a second-generation Japanese American, Baker an African American) and went on to prove that heroes come in all colors—and Clint Romesha, who led his outnumbered fellow soldiers against a determined enemy to prevent the Taliban from taking over a remote U.S. Army outpost in Afghanistan. Also included are civilians who have been honored by the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation for outstanding acts of bravery in crisis situations, from a school shooting to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Adding depth and context are illuminating essays on the combat experience and its aftermath, covering topics such as overcoming fear; a mother mourning the loss of her son; and “surviving hell” as a prisoner of war.

This is the first and only biography of Jeane Kirkpatrick, who became an iconic figure in the 1980s as Ronald Reagan's UN ambassador and the most forceful presence in the administration, outside of the President himself, in shaping the Reagan Doctrine and fighting the Cold War to a victorious conclusion. Political Woman traces the complex interlock between Kirkpatrick's personal and professional lives using her as yet unarchived private papers and extensive interviews with her and her family and with dozens of friends and associates. The portrait that emerges, filled with character and anecdote, is of an ambitious woman from the epicenter of middle America determined to break through the multi dimensional glass ceilings of her time and place. A pioneering feminist who would be hated by the feminist movement because of her association with Reagan and neo conservatism, she began her career in the post war period as an academic focusing on the subject of totalitarianism. She fell in love with a married man, Evron Kirkpatrick, who had been a close aide to "Wild Bill" Donovan in the wartime OSS and who would help form the CIA after the war. A leading professor at Georgetown, she also became an important Democratic Party activist. Dismayed by what she saw as McGovern's trashing of the Roosevelt coalition and by Carter's capitulation to Soviet advances, she led a group of Democratic liberals who felt homeless in the radicalized and "Blame America First" (a phrase from her famous 1984 Republican convention speech) Party into the Reagan administration. As Reagan's UN representative, Jeanette sharpened the spearpoint of a rearmed America ready to join the final battle of the Cold War, in the process staging dramatic battles with figures like Alexander Haig and George Schultz over policy toward the Soviets, the Cubans, and the Contras. This book tells this parallel story--the flight of centrist liberals out of the Democratic Party and into neoconservatism and the complex chess match of the end game of the Cold War--through the intimate story of a woman who was at the center of these interconnected dramas and who kept resurfacing until her death in 2006, most notably for posthumously breaking ranks with her fellow neoconservatives on the war in Iraq. It also shows the price she paid for her achievements in a private life filled with sorrow and loss as profound as her epic personal achievements.

This story is designed and written by Peter Collier for both the reader and the listener. Children will request parents to continuously re-read a story that has caught their imagination. When written in free verse, a story is both a delight to read and to hear. The reader feels accomplished when reading this story and, in the act of story telling, begins exaggerating tone, inflection, and mood. The illustrations by Simon Redekop are an expanding visual element, necessary for a clear understanding of the story. Without imaginative, detailed, and related illustrations the full scope of possible humour for the story is not complete. This story constitute several conceptual elements to motivate reading and precipitate a positive child's reading development. When constructed in free verse rhyme, while reading along, children quickly begin to retain portions of the story. Once the child begins reading independantly, such stories act as memory assisting templates to guide the beginning reader through their first reading selections. The reading successes of a child will fuel additional comprehension activities and help to jump start reading skills that greatly motivate the young reader. For the adult reader such stories are always a treat. I understand the necessity to include a reader's interests and needs as part of the story telling activities. The length of my stories are designed to be between 10 to 15 minutes, to act as a short break or bedtime activity. I have avoided making up new nouns and adjectives for purposes of rhyme, understanding that teachers do not appreciate this activity. I find that by identifying children by full name, as the story characters, it adds a sense of identity and reality. The children accept the diversity of people, which, in turn, opens the imagination to accepting limitless fictional situations and opportunities.

As leading New Leftists in the Sixties, Peter Collier and David Horowitz were intimately involved in the radicalism of the day. Later on, they became the first of their generation to publicly reject the objectives of that revolutionary era and point out the cultural chaos it had left behind. Part memoir, part political analysis, part social history, DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION is the compelling story of their intellectual journey into and out of the radical trenches. Telling stories of the New Left's most famous (and infamous) personalities and events, Collier and Horowitz reveal the destructive legacy of the Sixties and the way in which that decade continues to cast a long shadow over politics and culture today. When it was first published more than a decade ago, DESTRUCTIVE GENERATION was a controversial bestseller that some critics compared to Whittaker Chambers' powerful political testament, WITNESS. This new edition contains new material which makes this classic work more relevant than ever in our own divided time.

Proust's famous novel A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) is a fascinating exploration not only of memory and desire, of high society and everyday life, but also of art. The study focuses on Venice, one of the hero's central obsessions, and shows how a whole network of allusions to art (from Titian to Turner, from Ruskin to Emile Mâle, from Giotto to Bellini, from Byzantine mosaic to the dresses designed by Fortuny after paintings by Carpaccio) ties in with the hero's quest for self-knowledge and self-fulfilment. Peter Collier demonstrates how an understanding of the writer's artistic sources and reworkings can shed light both on Proust's complex prose style and on the aesthetic theory proposed by his novel. Most importantly, Venice and Italian art provide a new key to the central themes of the novel: memory and desire.

This description is based on the MIT professor's writings on linguistics in the 1950s; but beginning with his criticism of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Chomsky became much better known for his radical politics than for his theories of language. Over the past forty years he has gained a devoted following in the United States and Europe for his increasingly bitter--some say hysterical--censure of U.S. "crimes." Chomsky has complained about being ignored by mainstream publications such as the "New York Times," but in fact his steady stream of polemical works, like the best-selling "9-11," have made him the center of a veritable cult. In "The Anti-Chomsky Reader," editors Peter Collier and David Horowitz have assembled a set of essays that analyze Chomsky's intellectual career and the evolution of his anti-Americanism. The essays in this provocative book focus on subjects such as Chomsky's bizarre involvement with Holocaust revisionism, his apologies for Khmer Rouge tyrant Pol Pot, and his claim that America's policies in Latin America in the 1980s were comparable to Nazism. Scholar Paul Bogdanor writes about Chomsky's hatred of Israel. Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz discuss his gloating reaction to the September 11 attack. Linguists Paul Postal and Robert Levine reevaluate Chomsky's linguistics and find the same qualities there that others see in his politics: "a deep contempt for the truth, descents into incoherence, and verbal abuse of those who disagree with him." "The Anti-Chomsky Reader" presents a fascinating composite portrait of a man who arguably is our most influential public intellectual.