The Eleventh Hour: How Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. Brokered the Unlikely Deal That Won the War

In late November 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Joint Chiefs of Staff secretly boarded the battleship USS Iowa to attend a conference in Tehran with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, where the Allies would come to an agreement on a war plan to defeat Germany. Although Roosevelt's preparation at sea established the groundwork for the American position on D-Day, it was in the heated and electrifying debates that followed in Tehran--and only through those intense debates--that a deal was ultimately struck.

In The Eleventh Hour, critically acclaimed author L. Douglas Keeney explores FDR's covert conferences on the battleship and provides stunning insight into the formerly secret, behind-the-scenes transcripts from the meetings in Tehran. Brilliantly chronicling the three days of aggressive debates between the heads-of-state, Keeney demonstrates that Tehran, although remembered as a diplomatic conference with a well-known outcome, was in reality chaotic, conflicted, and subject to numerous heated, closed-door sessions--with a petulant, irritable Churchill; a strikingly reserved, detached Roosevelt; and an assertive but unexpectedly diplomatic and even charming Stalin, winning over his guest, President Roosevelt, whose quarters were bugged by the Soviets.

Seamlessly stitching together the private papers, diaries, meeting notes, and letters home of those on board, The Eleventh Hour narrates declassified transcripts, exposes surprising secrets, and illuminates how the debates of three men would ultimately end WWII.

Author: L. Douglas Keeney
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 03/31/2015
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.70h x 5.80w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781118269862

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 03/01/2015 pg. 16
Publishers Weekly 03/23/2015

About the Author
Keeney, L. Douglas: - L. Douglas Keeney is the award-winning author or co-author of more than a dozen books. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Southern California and was a sponsored post-graduate student at the Institute of Advanced Advertising Studies in New York City. He spent sixteen years on Madison Avenue before he founded Douglas Keeney & Company, a publishing and marketing company with various business interests including content creation for cable television networks, advertising for packaged goods companies, and books for NY publishers. In 1992, Keeney cofounded The Military Channel with two other partners. His work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, and Bloomberg. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.