Download or read book Modern American Political Dynasties written by Kathleen Gronnerud and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of entries offers a front seat view of the rise, reign, and fall of powerful modern political families and examines the effects they have had on political, social, and economic issues in American society. Modern American Political Dynasties: A Study of Power, Family, and Political Influence is a unique research resource and fascinating read that explores the dynamics and modern America's most influential political families. It provides a thorough study of approximately 20 of the best-known surnames in 20th-century American politics. More than just a biography, it highlights how these families' dynamics have influenced political practice and thought, providing a holistic context for the evolution of political dynasties in the United States. The text includes a historically grounded examination of the crossroads of family and politics as it charts the origins, development, peak strength, and decline of each family. It is the only published volume to include biographical and contextual information on major political dynasties in addition to fascinating research on high-profile personalities. The book is for any research institution collection and will be of interest to both academics and general readers interested in American history and politics.
Download or read book America s Political Dynasties written by Stephen Hess and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the 30th anniversary edition of a book that was hailed on publication in 1966 as "fascinating" by Margaret L. Coit in the Saturday Review and as "masterly" by Henry F. Graff in the New York Times Book Review.The Constitution could not be more specific: "No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States." Yet, in over two centuries since these words were written, the American people, despite official disapproval, have chosen a political nobility. For generation after generation they have turned for leadership to certain families. They are America's political dynasties. Now, in the twentieth century, surprisingly, American political life seems to be largely peopled by those who qualify, in Stewart Alsop's phrase, as "People's Dukes." They are all around us?Kennedys, Longs, Tafts, Roosevelts.Here is the panorama of America's political dynasties from colonial days to the present in fascinating profiles of sixteen of the leading families. Some, like the Roosevelts, have shown remarkable staying power. Others are all but forgotten, such as the Washburns, a family in which four sons of a bankrupt shopkeeper were elected to Congress from four different states. America's Political Dynasties investigates the roles of these families in shaping the nation and traces the whole pattern of political inheritance, which has been a little considered but unique and significant feature of American government and diplomacy. And in doing so, it also illuminates the lives and personalities of some two hundred often engaging, usually ambitious, sometimes brilliant, occasionally unscrupulous individuals.
Download or read book Modern American Political Dynasties written by Kathleen Gronnerud and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of entries offers a front seat view of the rise, reign, and fall of powerful modern political families and examines the effects they have had on political, social, and economic issues in American society. Modern American Political Dynasties: A Study of Power, Family, and Political Influence is a unique research resource and fascinating read that explores the dynamics and modern America's most influential political families. It provides a thorough study of approximately 20 of the best-known surnames in 20th-century American politics. More than just a biography, it highlights how these families' dynamics have influenced political practice and thought, providing a holistic context for the evolution of political dynasties in the United States. The text includes a historically grounded examination of the crossroads of family and politics as it charts the origins, development, peak strength, and decline of each family. It is the only published volume to include biographical and contextual information on major political dynasties in addition to fascinating research on high-profile personalities. The book is for any research institution collection and will be of interest to both academics and general readers interested in American history and politics.
Download or read book America s Political Dynasties written by Stephen Hess and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 778 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Constitution states that "no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States," yet it seems political nobility is as American as apple pie. America was founded in rebellion against nobility and inherited status. Yet from the start, dynastic families have been conspicuous in national politics. The Adamses. The Lodges. The Tafts. The Roosevelts. The Kennedys. And today the Bushes and the Clintons. Longtime presidential historian Stephen Hess offers an encyclopedic tour of the families that have loomed large over America's political history. Starting with John Adams, who served as the young nation's first vice president and earned the nickname "His Rotundity," Hess paints the portraits of the men and women who, by coincidence, connivance, or sheer sense of duty, have made up America's political elite. There are the well-known dynasties such as the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, and the names that live on only in history books, such as the Bayards (six generations of U.S. senators) and the Breckinridges (a vice president, two senators, and six representatives). Hess fills the pages of America's Political Dynasties with anecdotes and personality-filled stories of the families who have given the United States more than a fair share of its presidents, senators, governors, ambassadors, and cabinet members. This book also tells us the stories of the Bushes and what looks to be a political dynasty in waiting, the Clintons. Emblematic of America's growing diversity, Hess also examines how women, along with ethnic and racial minorities, have joined the ranks of dynastic political families.
Download or read book Democratic Dynasties written by Kanchan Chandra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dynastic politics, usually presumed to be the antithesis of democracy, is a routine aspect of politics in many modern democracies. This book introduces a new theoretical perspective on dynasticism in democracies, using original data on twenty-first-century Indian parliaments. It argues that the roots of dynastic politics lie at least in part in modern democratic institutions - states and parties - which give political families a leg-up in the electoral process. It also proposes a rethinking of the view that dynastic politics is a violation of democracy, showing that it can also reinforce some aspects of democracy while violating others. Finally, this book suggests that both reinforcement and violation are the products, not of some property intrinsic to political dynasties, but of the institutional environment from which those dynasties emerge.
Download or read book Dynasties and Democracy written by Daniel M. Smith and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although democracy is, in principle, the antithesis of dynastic rule, families with multiple members in elective office continue to be common around the world. In most democracies, the proportion of such "democratic dynasties" declines over time, and rarely exceeds ten percent of all legislators. Japan is a startling exception, with over a quarter of all legislators in recent years being dynastic. In Dynasties and Democracy, Daniel M. Smith sets out to explain when and why dynasties persist in democracies, and why their numbers are only now beginning to wane in Japan—questions that have long perplexed regional experts. Smith introduces a compelling comparative theory to explain variation in the presence of dynasties across democracies and political parties. Drawing on extensive legislator-level data from twelve democracies and detailed candidate-level data from Japan, he examines the inherited advantage that members of dynasties reap throughout their political careers—from candidate selection, to election, to promotion into cabinet. Smith shows how the nature and extent of this advantage, as well as its consequences for representation, vary significantly with the institutional context of electoral rules and features of party organization. His findings extend far beyond Japan, shedding light on the causes and consequences of dynastic politics for democracies around the world.
Download or read book Private Lives Public Consequences written by William Henry Chafe and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A political leader's decisions can determine the fate of a nation, but what determines how and why that leader makes certain choices? William H. Chafe, a distinguished historian of twentieth century America, examines eight of the most significant political leaders of the modern era in order to explore the relationship between their personal patterns of behavior and their political decision-making process. The result is a fascinating look at how personal lives and political fortunes have intersected to shape America over the past fifty years. One might expect our leaders to be healthy, wealthy, genteel, and happy. In fact, most of these individuals--from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Martin Luther King, Jr., from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton--came from dysfunctional families, including three children of alcoholics; half grew up in poor or only marginally secure homes; most experienced discord in their marriages; and at least two displayed signs of mental instability. What links this extraordinarily diverse group is an intense ambition to succeed, and the drive to overcome adversity. Indeed, adversity offered a vehicle to develop the personal attributes that would define their careers and shape the way they exercised power. Chafe probes the influences that forged these men's lives, and profiles the distinctive personalities that molded their exercise of power in times of danger and strife. The history of the United States from the Depression into the new century cannot be understood without exploring the dynamic and critical relationship between personal history and political leadership that these eight life stories so poignantly reveal.
Download or read book Great Expectations written by Noemie Emery and published by Trade Paper Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the suicide of the eldest son of John Quincy Adams, caught up in fiscal and sexual scandal, political families in the United States have been pushing, prodding, and trying to shame their sons into power, with a potent effect on American history, and an often devastating impact on personal lives.
Download or read book The Last American Aristocrat written by David S. Brown and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “marvelous…compelling” (The New York Times Book Review) biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals, who witnessed and contributed to the United States’ dramatic transition from a colonial society to a modern nation. Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family—after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams—to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist. Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these powerful men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era. “Thoroughly researched and gracefully written” (The Wall Street Journal), The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence. Offering a fresh window on nineteenth century US history, as well as a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before, The Last American Aristocrat is a “standout portrait of the man and his era” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Download or read book American Dynasty written by Kevin Phillips and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-09-30 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An acerbic, withering account of the ascent of the Bush family to the pinnacle of the American political and social elite and the implications of the dynasty's hold on power for democracy in America. With an unerring instinct for fakery and humbug,Phillips traces the convoluted trail of Bush mendacity through three generations. The picture he paints of a family willing to do ANYTHING to hold power and a country so craven as to vote for it is both very funny and completely dismaying in equal measure.
Download or read book The American Political Family written by Donn M. Kurtz and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every election provides additional evidence of the continuity of families in American politics. Donn M. Kurtz compiled this collection of articles while conducting research on political families, also hoping to synthesize the body of literature on this subject. The book considers political families as a national, rather than a regional, phenomenon, looking at situations such as children with greater political efficacy and involvement in politics at a younger age. The selections are of an interdisciplinary nature and draw upon several outlets: history, sociology, political science, genealogy, and economics. Contents: Introduction: The Family in Politics, Donn M. Kurtz; Continuity Across Generation: The Adams Family Myth, David F. Musto; Making of a Myth: Abraham Lincoln's Family Background in the Perspective of Jacksonian Politics, Thomas L. Purvis; Theodore Roosevelt's Ancestry: A Study in Heredity, Howard K. Beale; The First Family: Presidential Kinship and Its Theoretical Implications, Michael P. Merlie and Edward T. Silva; Family Relationships, Congressional Recruitment, and Political Modernization, Alfred B. Clubok, Norman M. Wilensky, and Forrest J. Berghorn; Favorite Sons: Intergenerational Wealth Transfers Among Politicians, David N. Laband and Bernard F. Lentz; Political Families in Louisiana, Donn M. Kurtz; Index
Download or read book The Last Kings of Shanghai written by Jonathan Kaufman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
Download or read book America s Political Dynasties written by Stephen Hess and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 787 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the 30th anniversary edition of a book that was hailed on publication in 1966 as "fascinating" by Margaret L. Coit in the Saturday Review and as "masterly" by Henry F. Graff in the New York Times Book Review.The Constitution could not be more specific: "No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States." Yet, in over two centuries since these words were written, the American people, despite official disapproval, have chosen a political nobility. For generation after generation they have turned for leadership to certain families. They are America's political dynasties. Now, in the twentieth century, surprisingly, American political life seems to be largely peopled by those who qualify, in Stewart Alsop's phrase, as "People's Dukes." They are all around us Kennedys, Longs, Tafts, Roosevelts.Here is the panorama of America's political dynasties from colonial days to the present in fascinating profiles of sixteen of the leading families. Some, like the Roosevelts, have shown remarkable staying power. Others are all but forgotten, such as the Washburns, a family in which four sons of a bankrupt shopkeeper were elected to Congress from four different states. America's Political Dynasties investigates the roles of these families in shaping the nation and traces the whole pattern of political inheritance, which has been a little considered but unique and significant feature of American government and diplomacy. And in doing so, it also illuminates the lives and personalities of some two hundred often engaging, usually ambitious, sometimes brilliant, occasionally unscrupulous individuals.
Download or read book Brookings Big Ideas for America written by Michael E. O'Hanlon and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a new administration takes office, what are the biggest issues facing the country? The Brookings Institution offers answers to that question in this volume, which continues the Brookings tradition of providing each incoming administration with a nonpartisan analysis of the major domestic and foreign questions confronting America. On the domestic front, Brookings scholars tackle topics ranging from health care and improving economic opportunity to criminal justice reform, lawful hacking, and improving infrastructure. The alliance system, the relationship with China, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria among the foreign policies issues addressed. Throughout, Brookings scholars share their individual ideas on how best to address the agenda that awaits the new administration.
Download or read book Heirs of an Honored Name written by Douglas R Egerton and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enthralling chronicle of the American nineteenth century told through the unraveling of the nation's first political dynasty John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow decline of the family's political legacy. In Heirs of an Honored Name, award-winning historian Douglas R. Egerton depicts a family grown famous, wealthy -- and aimless. After the Civil War, Republicans looked to the Adamses to steer their party back to its radical 1850s roots. Instead, Charles Francis Sr. and his children -- Charles Francis Jr., John Quincy II, Henry and Clover Adams, and Louisa Adams Kuhn -- largely quit the political arena and found refuge in an imagined past of aristocratic preeminence. An absorbing story of brilliant siblings and family strain, Heirs of an Honored Name shows how the burden of impossible expectations shaped the Adamses and, through them, American history.
Download or read book The Modern American Presidency written by Lewis L. Gould and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Modern American Presidency is a interpretive synthesis of our twentieth-century leaders, filled with intriguing insights into how the presidency has evolved as America rose to prominence on the world stage. Gould traces the decline of the party system and the increasing importance of the media, resulting in the rise of the role of the president as celebrity. He traces the growth of the White House staff and executive bureaucracy. And he shows us a succession of chief executives who increasingly have known less and less about the business of governing the country, observing that most would have had a better historical reputation if they had contented themselves with a single term."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations 1558 1630 written by Michael Questier and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-20 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558-1630 revisits what used to be regarded as an entirely 'mainstream' topic in the historiography of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - namely, the link between royal dynastic politics and the outcome of the process usually referred to as 'the Reformation'. As everyone knows, the principal mode of transacting so much of what constituted public political activity in the early modern period, and especially of securing something like political obedience if not exactly stability, was through the often distinctly un-modern management of the crown's dynastic rights, via the line of royal succession and in particular through matching into other royal and princely families. Dynastically, the states of Europe resembled a vast sexual chess board on which the trick was to preserve, advance, and then match (to advantage) one's own most powerful pieces. This process and practice were, obviously, not unique to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the changes in religion generated by the discontents of western Christendom in the Reformation period made dynastic politics ideologically fraught in a way which had not been the case previously, in that certain modes of religious thought were now taken to reflect on, critique, and hinder this mode of exercising monarchical authority, sometimes even to the extent of defining who had the right to be king or queen.
