Prologue Read Online Free

lions and elephants and hear what amazing, incredible animals they were.
“Oh, all right,” Paul said. “It doesn’t take too long, does it?”
“It can take as long as you’d like, sir,” she said, nearly giddy with delight at finally getting to show someone around her beloved exhibit.
The tour began with John Kennedy’s defeat of Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. In 1961, the guide–Raisa–said, the good President Kennedy was unfortunately influenced by the military adventurists of the previous administration, and decided to attack the peace-loving Cuban workers.
“Previous administration? The previous administration was Republican, there weren’t any holdovers,” Paul said.
Raisa lowered her eyes. “President Kennedy wouldn’t do that on his own, ” she said softly. “He loved the working class, he fought for the advancement of the proletariat. It was the previous administration.”
DeVere opened his mouth to disagree, then realized all he would do was hurt this girl’s feelings.
“Yes, I see.”
Raisa perked up. “Then in 1962 the Cuban Missile Partnership paved the way for good relations and trust between America and Cuba .” She moved on to the next panel, celebrating Kennedy’s 1964 narrow re-election over the evil Barry Goldwater, his 1965 Civil Rights legislation ensuring the complete equality inherent at the center of Communism–“already we can see his longing to join the Soviet Union”–his ability to keep the U.S. from meddling in South and Central America during the successful Ché Guevara revolution in the late 1960s, his wise statesmanlike policy to allow Southeast Asian workers and revolutionaries to throw off the imperialist French shackles binding those societies, and the election of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Raisa looked at the picture of Robert F. Kennedy the way Grace looked at pictures of cheetahs in full stride.
Robert F. Kennedy, that was the disk Grace needed, deVere remembered. Her class was studying the Robert F. Kennedy administration. “Robert F. Kennedy,” he said to etch it in his mind.
“Oh yes,” Raisa said, looking up. “Most historians prefer John Kennedy, but I like Bobby. He had more insight, I think, and he didn’t have the other Kennedy’s, ah...problems.”
DeVere nodded as Raisa prattled on about Robert F. Kennedy’s brilliant War on Poverty and ability to focus the attention of the U.S. on social injustice at home and not get involved, as some misguided reactionary elements in the government were advocating, when the Malay Peninsula adopted Communism in the late 1960s.
“Unfortunately, after the Kennedys left office, President John Lindsay committed America to stopping the advancement of Communism in Western Europe, but his reactionary Euro-Centrism only allowed the forces of progress, under the brilliant leadership of Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara, to liberate Central and most of South America. Naturally, we hope to be able to liberate the rest of Western Europe some day as well.”
The pictures showed a smiling Castro in Nicaragua , and a determined Ché in Mexico City standing next to a pinch-faced frowning soldier with a general’s insignia. Paul recognized him as the American defector who had helped Ché’s campaigns.
She moved in front of the largest panel, which depicted America ’s capitulation. DeVere knew the story. In the late 1970s, Ché and Castro assembled an army of a million foot soldiers on America ’s southern border. The Soviet Union and China fought the first of their two Great Wars. In an effort to oppose Soviet expansion, the United States supported China , which was then devastated by Russian nuclear and biological weapons. Millions, including over 315,000 American soldiers, died like ants. Then chemical weapons were detonated in Phoenix , Houston , and New Orleans , and a dirty bomb in St. Louis . In order to prevent America from suffering the same holocaust that the Soviet Union and China had just experienced, the