Download or read book Some of It Was Fun written by Nicholas Deb Katzenbach and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 2008-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Some of It Was Fun Working with RFK and LBJ written by Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As legal counsel and deputy attorney general under Bobby Kennedy and then attorney general and under secretary of state for Lyndon Johnson, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach found himself at the center of the defining issues of the 1960s: the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. In this engaging memoir, he treats readers to a ringside seat for episodes including his confrontation with segregationist governor George C. Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama as well as his successful efforts to steer the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Bill through Congress. The lively, intimate narrative then follows Katzenbach's transition to LBJ's State Department, where he and other members of the administration came to realize the devastating costs of the Vietnam War." "Some of It Was Fun is as much a fresh and candid perspective on a decade that continues to captivate Americans as it is a memoir of one man's eight years in Washington. Yet one of the book's greatest revelations is the voice of a natural storyteller. Winningly self-deprecating and charmingly matter-of-fact, Katzenbach depicts moments of intense drama with compassion, and his assessments of the strengths and shortcomings of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations are measured and discerning. At the heart of this story is the belief shared by Katzenbach and his colleagues that they could truly change the world. Stirring, funny, and, above all, deeply relevant, Some of It Was Fun challenges Americans to once again believe this of themselves."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book LBJ s 1968 written by Kyle Longley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his response to the year that he characterized as a 'year of a continuous nightmare'.
Download or read book Justice Rising written by Patricia Sullivan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In most accounts of the tumultuous 1960s, Robert Kennedy plays a supporting role...Sullivan corrects this and puts RFK near the center of the nation’s struggle for racial justice.” —Richard Thompson Ford, Washington Post “A profound and uplifting account of Robert F. Kennedy’s brave crusade for racial equality. This is narrative history at its absolute finest.” —Douglas Brinkley, author of Rosa Parks “A sobering analysis of the forces arrayed against advocates of racial justice. Desegregation suits took years to move through the courts. Ballot access was controlled by local officials...Justice Rising reminds us that although he was assassinated over 50 years ago, Kennedy remains relevant.” —Glenn C. Altschuler, Florida Courier “A groundbreaking book that reorients our understanding of a surprisingly underexplored aspect of Robert Kennedy’s life and career—race and civil rights—and sheds new light on race relations during a pivotal era of American history.” —Kenneth Mack, author of Representing the Race “Brilliant and beautifully written...could hardly be more timely.” —Daniel Geary, Irish Times Race and politics converged in the 1960s in ways that indelibly changed America. This landmark reconsideration of Robert Kennedy’s life and legacy reveals how, as the nation confronted escalating demands for racial justice, RFK grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader. Intertwining Kennedy’s story with the Black freedom struggles of the 1960s, Justice Rising provides a fresh account of the changing political alignments that marked the decade. As Attorney General, Kennedy personally interceded to enforce desegregation rulings and challenge voter restrictions in the South. Morally committed to change, he was instrumental in creating the bipartisan coalition essential to passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. After his brother’s assassination, his commitment took on a new urgency when cities emerged as the major front in the long fight for racial justice. On the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination, two months before he would himself be killed, his anguished appeal captured the hopes of a turbulent decade: “In this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in.” It is a question that remains urgent and unanswered.
Download or read book Enemies written by Tim Weiner and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the history of the FBI's secret intelligence operations, detailing how the bureau has been used to conduct political warfare, and how it became the most powerful intelligence service in the United States.
Download or read book Perspectives on Presidential Leadership written by Michael Patrick Cullinane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011 Barack Obama invited ten distinguished biographers to the White House to ask them one question: which past American president should I emulate? This was not the first time Obama asked scholars this, but the answer he received would differ as presidential legacies waxed and waned. In 2008 Obama chose Lincoln; in 2009, Reagan; and in 2010, Theodore Roosevelt. Perspectives on Presidential Leadership is an examination of presidential legacy, and in particular an analysis of the first ever UK ranking of American presidents which took place in 2011. In thirteen chapters, thirteen individual presidential administrations are assessed. Some presidents have been considered a success, others a failure; both types are featured in these thirteen case studies in a measured attempt to understand how the perception of presidential leadership evolves, shifts, and contorts across three centuries of American politics. The case studies also derive from the expertise of the collected British, Irish and Canadian authors, all of whom are leading scholars in their fields, and many of which took part in the 2011 survey. At a time when understanding presidential legacy is in high demand, this book offers a unique international perspective. Through extended commentary and inter-disciplinary study of the UK perspective it provides groundbreaking research.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement written by Christopher M. Richardson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fiftieth anniversary of many major milestones in what is commonly called the African-American Civil Rights Movement was celebrated in 2013. Fifty years removed from the Birmingham campaign, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and the March on Washington and it is clear that the sacrifices borne by those generations in that decade were not in vain. Monuments, museums, and exhibitions across the world honor the men and women of the Movement and testify to their immeasurable role in redefining the United States. The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement is a guide to the history of the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. The history of this period is covered in a detailed chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, significant legal cases, local struggles, forgotten heroes, and prominent women in the Movement. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Civil Rights Movement.
Download or read book The Shadow of Selma written by Joe Street and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Shadow of Selma evaluates the 1965 civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, the historical memory of the campaign’s marches, and the continuing relevance of and challenges to the Voting Rights Act. The contributors present Selma not just as a keystone event but, much like Ferguson today, as a transformative place: a supposedly unimportant location that became the focal point of epochal historical events. By shifting the focus from leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. to the thousands of unheralded people who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge—and the networks that undergirded and opposed them—this innovative volume considers the campaign’s long-term impact and its place in history. The volume recalls the historical currents that surrounded Selma, discussing grassroots activism, the role of President Lyndon B. Johnson during the struggle for the Voting Rights Act, and the political reaction to Selma at home and abroad. Using Ava DuVernay's 2014 Hollywood film as a stepping stone, the editors bring together various essays that address the ways media—from television and newspaper coverage to "race beat" journalism—represented and reconfigured Selma. The contributors underline the power of misrepresentation in shaping popular memory and in fueling a redemptive narrative that glosses over ongoing racial problems. Finally, the volume traces the fifty-year legacy of the Voting Rights Act. It reveals the many subtle and overt methods by which opponents of racial equality attempted to undo the act’s provisions, with a particular focus on the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that eliminated sections of the act designed to prevent discrimination. Taken together, the essays urge readers not to be blind to forms of discrimination and injustice that continue to shape inequalities in the United States. They remind us that while today's obstacles to racial equality may look different from a literacy test or a grimfaced Alabama state trooper, they are no less real. Contributors: Alma Jean Billingslea Brown | Ben Houston | Peter Ling | Mark McLay | Tony Badger | Clive Webb | Aniko Bodroghkozy | Mark Walmsley | George Lewis | Megan Hunt | Devin Fergus | Barbara Harris Combs | Lynn Mie Itagaki
Download or read book The Long Reach of the Sixties written by Laura Kalman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Americans often hear that Presidential elections are about "who controls" the Supreme Court. In The Long Reach of the Sixties, eminent legal historian Laura Kalman focuses on the period between 1965 and 1971, when Presidents Johnson and Nixon launched the most ambitious effort to do so since Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack it with additional justices. Those six years-- the apex of the Warren Court, often described as the most liberal in American history, and the dawn of the Burger Court--saw two successful Supreme Court nominations and two failed ones by LBJ, four successful nominations and two failed ones by Nixon, the first resignation of a Supreme Court justice as a result of White House pressure, and the attempted impeachment of another. Using LBJ and Nixon's telephone conversations and a wealth of archival collections, Kalman roots their efforts to mold the Court in their desire to protect their Presidencies, and she sets the contests over it within the broader context of a struggle between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government. The battles that ensued transformed the meaning of the Warren Court in American memory. Despite the fact that the Court's work generally reflected public opinion, these fights calcified the image of the Warren Court as "activist" and "liberal" in one of the places that image hurts the most--the contemporary Supreme Court appointment process. To this day, the term "activist Warren Court" has totemic power among conservatives. Kalman has a second purpose as well: to explain how the battles of the sixties changed the Court itself as an institution in the long term and to trace the ways in which the 1965-71 period has haunted--indeed scarred--the Supreme Court appointments process"--
Download or read book Father Son and Constitution written by Alexander Wohl and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark resigned his seat on the bench at the youthful age of 67 after 18 years, his decision was unique in the annals of Court history: he was leaving so that his son Ramsey, just nominated as Attorney General, could assume the job Clark himself had once held without conflict of interest. As Alexander Wohl shows, Tom and Ramsey Clark had a profound impact on American law and society. For nearly three quarters of a century, they influenced presidents, policies, and legal rulings, during careers that tracked closely with some of the most significant and controversial episodes in modern American history. Highlighting their consistent effort to balance individual liberties with government power, Wohl examines how their work reflected the tensions that continue to resonate in today's legal and policy battles. The two men, however, evolved quite differently. As a young government lawyer, Tom Clark was a key figure in enforcing the relocation of Japanese Americans, and as Attorney General he was vilified by civil liberties advocates for the Cold War policies he implemented, even as he promoted a progressive strategy on civil rights. Ramsey began his career to the ideological left of his father, was intimately involved in enforcement of civil rights laws during the turbulent 1960s, as Attorney General fought to expand protections of individual rights, and as a private attorney represented clients on the farthest reaches of the individual rights-government power spectrum. A unique approach for understanding our nation's history during the second half of the twentieth-century, Wohl's study addresses such salient issues as civil rights, free speech, government surveillance and rights of privacy, presidential power, and the role of judges in interpreting the Constitution. The Clarks' lives and careers also offer a veritable who's who of 20th-century American law and policy: from Tom's close relationships with Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Sam Rayburn, and Earl Warren, to Ramsey's connections with Robert Kennedy, LBJ, and Martin Luther King Jr. Both men befriended and battled J. Edgar Hoover and both were targets of political attack-twenty years apart-by Richard Nixon. At its fundamental core, however, Wohl's book presents a moving and intimate portrait of a unique father-son relationship that endured through triumph and tribulation and that should appeal to anyone interested in how the personal and the political intertwine in a highly public setting.
Download or read book Lawyers as Leaders written by Deborah L. Rhode and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No occupation in America supplies a greater proportion of leaders than the legal profession, yet it has done little to prepare them for this role. Lawyers sit at the helm of a vast array of powerful law firms, businesses, governmental, and nonprofit organizations. Two of the last three presidents have been lawyers. And yet almost no occupation rouses greater public distrust. This paradox raises two important questions: Why do we look to lawyers to lead, and why do so many of them prove to be so ill-prepared for that role? In Lawyers as Leaders, eminent law professor Deborah Rhode not only answers these questions but provides an invaluable overview for attorneys who occupy or aspire to leadership positions in public and private practice settings. Drawing on a broad range of interdisciplinary research, biographical profiles, and empirical studies, she covers everything from decision making, conflict management, and communication to ethics and diversity in leadership, and what lawyers can do to advance both their professional development and the public interest. Rhode contends that the legal profession attracts many people with the ambition and analytic capabilities to be leaders but often fails to develop other qualities that are essential to their effectiveness. Successful lawyers need to be confident, competitive, and even combative, but possessing such qualities often results in a lack of interpersonal sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and resilience-the "soft skills" that both legal education and the reward structure of legal practice consistently undervalue. The most successful leaders, Rhode argues, are those who can see past their own ambitions and retain a capacity for critical reflection on their performance. The first serious work on leadership and law, Lawyers as Leaders will prove essential to law students, law faculty, and lawyers holding or seeking governance positions.
Download or read book An Idea Whose Time Has Come written by Todd S. Purdum and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A top Washington journalist recounts the dramatic political battle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that created modern America, on the fiftieth anniversary of its passage It was a turbulent time in America—a time of sit-ins, freedom rides, a March on Washington and a governor standing in the schoolhouse door—when John F. Kennedy sent Congress a bill to bar racial discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Countless civil rights measures had died on Capitol Hill in the past. But this one was different because, as one influential senator put it, it was "an idea whose time has come." In a powerful narrative layered with revealing detail, Todd S. Purdum tells the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recreating the legislative maneuvering and the larger-than-life characters who made its passage possible. From the Kennedy brothers to Lyndon Johnson, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen, Purdum shows how these all-too-human figures managed, in just over a year, to create a bill that prompted the longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate yet was ultimately adopted with overwhelming bipartisan support. He evokes the high purpose and low dealings that marked the creation of this monumental law, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of new interviews that bring to life this signal achievement in American history. Often hailed as the most important law of the past century, the Civil Rights Act stands as a lesson for our own troubled times about what is possible when patience, bipartisanship, and decency rule the day.
Download or read book Presidents Secrets written by Mary Graham and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the nation's most important secret meeting--the Constitutional Convention--presidents have struggled to balance open, accountable government with necessary secrecy in military affairs and negotiations. For the first one hundred and twenty years, a culture of open government persisted, but new threats and technology have long since shattered the old bargains. Today, presidents neither protect vital information nor provide the open debate Americans expect.
Download or read book True Believer written by James Traub and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A celebrated historian recounts Hubert Humphrey’s role as a liberal hero of twentieth-century America Hubert Humphrey was liberalism’s most dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice. As a young politician in 1948, he defied segregationists and forced the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights. As a senator in 1964, he made good on that commitment by helping pass the Civil Rights Act. But as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, his support for the war in Vietnam made him a target for both Right and Left, and he suffered a shattering loss in the presidential election of 1968. Though Humphrey’s defeat was widely seen as the end of America’s era of liberal optimism, he never gave up. Even after his humiliation on the most public stage, he crafted a new vision of economic justice to counter the yawning political divisions consuming American politics. This biography reveals a deep-dyed idealist willing to compromise and even fight ugly in pursuit of a better society. Elegantly crafted and strikingly relevant to the present, True Believer celebrates Hubert Humphrey’s long struggle for justice for all.
Download or read book The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement written by David C. Carter and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the passage of sweeping civil rights and voting rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, the civil rights movement stood poised to build on considerable momentum. In a famous speech at Howard University in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that victory in the next battle for civil rights would be measured in "equal results" rather than equal rights and opportunities. It seemed that for a brief moment the White House and champions of racial equality shared the same objectives and priorities. Finding common ground proved elusive, however, in a climate of growing social and political unrest marked by urban riots, the Vietnam War, and resurgent conservatism. Examining grassroots movements and organizations and their complicated relationships with the federal government and state authorities between 1965 and 1968, David C. Carter takes readers through the inner workings of local civil rights coalitions as they tried to maintain strength within their organizations while facing both overt and subtle opposition from state and federal officials. He also highlights internal debates and divisions within the White House and the executive branch, demonstrating that the federal government's relationship to the movement and its major goals was never as clear-cut as the president's progressive rhetoric suggested. Carter reveals the complex and often tense relationships between the Johnson administration and activist groups advocating further social change, and he extends the traditional timeline of the civil rights movement beyond the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Download or read book A Companion to Lyndon B Johnson written by Mitchell B. Lerner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion offers an overview of Lyndon B. Johnson's life, presidency, and legacy, as well as a detailed look at the central arguments and scholarly debates from his term in office. Explores the legacy of Johnson and the historical significance of his years as president Covers the full range of topics, from the social and civil rights reforms of the Great Society to the increased American involvement in Vietnam Incorporates the dramatic new evidence that has come to light through the release of around 8,000 phone conversations and meetings that Johnson secretly recorded as President
Download or read book Marigold written by James Hershberg and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-11 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marigold presents the first rigorously documented, in-depth story of one of the Vietnam War's last great mysteries: the secret peace initiative, codenamed "Marigold," that sought to end the war in 1966. The initiative failed, the war dragged on for another seven years, and this episode sank into history as an unresolved controversy. Antiwar critics claimed President Johnson had bungled (or, worse, deliberately sabotaged) a breakthrough by bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned secret U.S.-North Vietnamese encounter in Poland. Yet, LBJ and top aides angrily insisted that Poland never had authority to arrange direct talks and Hanoi was not ready to negotiate. This book uses new evidence from long hidden communist sources to show that, in fact, Poland was authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts and that Hanoi had committed to entering talks with Washington. It reveals LBJ's personal role in bombing Hanoi as he utterly disregarded the pleas of both the Polish and his own senior advisors. The historical implications of missing this opportunity are immense: Marigold might have ended the war years earlier, saving thousands of lives, and dramatically changed U.S. political history.
