Background
Fred Kaplan was born on July 4, 1954, in Hutchinson, Kansas, United States to the family of Julius E. Kaplan and Ruth Gottfried.
173 W Lorain St, Oberlin, OH 44074, United States
Fred Kaplan went off to Oberlin College as a prospective literature major, Nevertheless, the Watergate hearings, which he watched every day in the summer after his freshman year, switched Kaplan to political science, initially with an activist bent (he worked the next summer for a tenants’ rights group in Harlem and spent a Winter Term with the Citizens Action Program in Chicago), until he was drawn to the International Relations. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976.
77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
In graduate school, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kaplan immersed himself in the still-headier world of nuclear strategy, arms control, and military force-planning, on which he then built a career. He received his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in 1978 and 1983 respectively.
2014
420 Renaissance Park, 1135 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02120, United States
Fred Kaplan speaking at the Northeastern University College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
2016
312 Sutter Street, Suite 200 San Francisco, California 94108, United States
Fred Kaplan speaking at World Affairs conference.
2016
754-790 Derussy Rd, West Point, NY 10996, United States
Fred Kaplan lecturing for cadets and faculty in Washington Hall at West Point.
2020
Portrait photo of Fred Kaplan.
173 W Lorain St, Oberlin, OH 44074, United States
Fred Kaplan went off to Oberlin College as a prospective literature major, Nevertheless, the Watergate hearings, which he watched every day in the summer after his freshman year, switched Kaplan to political science, initially with an activist bent (he worked the next summer for a tenants’ rights group in Harlem and spent a Winter Term with the Citizens Action Program in Chicago), until he was drawn to the International Relations. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976.
77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
In graduate school, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kaplan immersed himself in the still-headier world of nuclear strategy, arms control, and military force-planning, on which he then built a career. He received his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in 1978 and 1983 respectively.
(This is the untold story of the small group of men who ha...)
This is the untold story of the small group of men who have devised the plans and shaped the policies on how to use the Bomb. The book (first published in 1983) explores the secret world of these strategists of the nuclear age and brings to light a chapter in American political and military history never before revealed.
https://www.amazon.com/Wizards-Armageddon-Stanford-Nuclear-Age/dp/0804718849/ref=sr_1_13?qid=1580986650&refinements=p_27%3AFred+Kaplan&s=books&sr=1-13&text=Fred+Kaplan
1983
(America's power is in decline, its allies alienated, its ...)
America's power is in decline, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past few years is well known. Why it happened continues to puzzle. Celebrated Slate columnist Fred Kaplan explains the grave misconceptions that enabled George W. Bush and his aides to get so far off track and traces the genesis and evolution of these ideas from the era of Nixon through Reagan to the present day.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DNL36EK/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5
2008
(The Insurgents is the inside story of the small group of ...)
The Insurgents is the inside story of the small group of soldier-scholars, led by General David Petraeus, who plotted to revolutionize one of the largest, oldest, and most hidebound institutions - the United States military. Their aim was to build a new Army that could fight the new kind of war in the post-Cold War age: not massive wars on vast battlefields, but “small wars” in cities and villages, against insurgents and terrorists. These would be wars not only of fighting but of “nation-building,” often not of necessity but of choice.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008J4RONU/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2
2013
(In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Game...)
In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Games, in which a teenager unwittingly hacks the Pentagon, and asked his top general if the scenario was plausible. The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security. From the 1991 Gulf War to conflicts in Haiti, Serbia, Syria, the former Soviet republics, Iraq, and Iran, where cyber warfare played a significant role, Dark Territory chronicles a little-known past that shines an unsettling light on our future. Fred Kaplan probes the inner corridors of the National Security Agency, the beyond-top-secret cyber units in the Pentagon, the “information warfare” squads of the military services, and the national security debates in the White House to reveal the details of the officers, policymakers, scientists, and spies who devised this new form of warfare and who have been planning - and (more often than people know) fighting - these wars for decades.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1476763267/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
2016
(Fred Kaplan, hailed by The New York Times as “a rare comb...)
Fred Kaplan, hailed by The New York Times as “a rare combination of defense intellectual and pugnacious reporter,” takes us into the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “Tank” in the Pentagon, and the vast chambers of Strategic Command to bring us the untold stories - based on exclusive interviews and previously classified documents - of how America’s presidents and generals have thought about, threatened, broached, and just barely avoided nuclear war from the dawn of the atomic age until today.
https://www.amazon.com/Bomb-Presidents-Generals-History-Nuclear/dp/1982107294
2020
(While conventional accounts focus on the sixties as the e...)
While conventional accounts focus on the sixties as the era of pivotal change that swept the nation, Fred Kaplan argues that it was 1959 that ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the decades that followed. Pop culture exploded in upheaval with the rise of artists like Jasper Johns, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, and Miles Davis. Court rulings unshackled previously banned books. Political power broadened with the onset of Civil Rights laws and protests. The sexual and feminist revolutions took their first steps with the birth control pill. America entered the war in Vietnam, and a new style in superpower diplomacy took hold. The invention of the microchip and the Space Race put a new twist on the frontier myth.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470602031/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4
journalist writer author politologist
Fred Kaplan was born on July 4, 1954, in Hutchinson, Kansas, United States to the family of Julius E. Kaplan and Ruth Gottfried.
Fred Kaplan went off to Oberlin College as a prospective literature major, Nevertheless, the Watergate hearings, which he watched every day in the summer after his freshman year, switched Kaplan to political science, initially with an activist bent (he worked the next summer for a tenants’ rights group in Harlem and spent a Winter Term with the Citizens Action Program in Chicago), until he was drawn to the International Relations. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976.
In graduate school, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kaplan immersed himself in the still-headier world of nuclear strategy, arms control, and military force-planning, on which he then built a career. He received his Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in 1978 and 1983 respectively.
In 1978, Fred Kaplan moved to Washington and worked as Representative's Les Aspin’s foreign and defense policy adviser in the House of Representatives. After two years, he realized that he "wasn’t cut out for even the outskirts of officialdom", left, and wrote The Wizards of Armageddon, an inside history of nuclear strategy. By the time he finished the book, nuclear strategies was a big issue; the major newspapers were hiring “experts” as their defense correspondents; he got a call from the Boston Globe, and joined up as a reporter.) Kaplan stayed at the Globe for 20 years - in District of Columbia through the 80s, as Moscow bureau chief in the early post-Soviet era, then New York bureau chief for seven years during Giuliani Time and the attacks on 9/11 - all the while doing occasional freelance writing, too (including reviewing jazz, high-end audio, and movies, which he still does for Stereophile and Home Theater).
At the end of 2002, Kaplan quit the Globe and got hired by Slate to be the “War Stories” columnist. It was the best professional move for him he ever made. He found his voice as a writer, continued to do longer pieces for other publications, and churned out three more books - Daydream Believers, about American foreign policy in the early 21st century, 1959: The Year Everything Changed, (which fuses all my interests and passions), The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (which was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist), Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, and, most recently, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War.
(Fred Kaplan, hailed by The New York Times as “a rare comb...)
2020(While conventional accounts focus on the sixties as the e...)
(The Insurgents is the inside story of the small group of ...)
2013(In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Game...)
2016(This is the untold story of the small group of men who ha...)
1983(America's power is in decline, its allies alienated, its ...)
2008In the sphere of cybersecurity Fred Kaplan addresses how Russia’s hack of Hillary Clinton’s campaign is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cyberwar. He shares insights into how major nations hack each other constantly to spy, steal information and corrupt each other’s computers with viruses. He illuminates the troubling situation at hand -that if a real war were to break out, cyber warfare could destabilize power grids, financial sectors and other key features of the world economy within minutes. Through captivating anecdotes and analysis, he shows that these dangers are nothing new - they are an inherent feature of the technology and have been since the dawn of the Internet fifty years ago.
As a teenager, Fred Kaplan fell hard for movies, jazz, and Lenny Bruce.
Fred Kaplan married a journalist, author, and media analyst Brooke Gladstone in 1983. They have twin daughters Maxine and Sophie.