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Book Generals in the Cabinet Room

Download or read book Generals in the Cabinet Room written by Yoram Peri and published by US Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic shift of power has taken place within Israel's political system; where once the military was usually the servant of civilian politicians, today, argues Yoram Peri, generals lead the way when it comes to foreign and defense policymaking.

Book The Cabinet

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lindsay M. Chervinsky
  • Publisher : Belknap Press
  • Release : 2020-04-07
  • ISBN : 0674986482
  • Pages : 433 pages

Download or read book The Cabinet written by Lindsay M. Chervinsky and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Excellence in American History Book Award Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize “Cogent, lucid, and concise...An indispensable guide to the creation of the cabinet...Groundbreaking...we can now have a much greater appreciation of this essential American institution, one of the major legacies of George Washington’s enlightened statecraft.” —Ron Chernow On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries—Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph—for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrection, and constitutional challenges—and finding congressional help distinctly lacking—he decided he needed a group of advisors he could turn to for guidance. Authoritative and compulsively readable, The Cabinet reveals the far-reaching consequences of this decision. To Washington’s dismay, the tensions between Hamilton and Jefferson sharpened partisan divides, contributing to the development of the first party system. As he faced an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, he came to treat the cabinet as a private advisory body, greatly expanding the role of the executive branch and indelibly transforming the presidency. “Important and illuminating...an original angle of vision on the foundations and development of something we all take for granted.” —Jon Meacham “Fantastic...A compelling story.” —New Criterion “Helps us understand pivotal moments in the 1790s and the creation of an independent, effective executive.” —Wall Street Journal

Book The Best People

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alexander Nazaryan
  • Publisher : Hachette Books
  • Release : 2019-06-18
  • ISBN : 0316421421
  • Pages : 271 pages

Download or read book The Best People written by Alexander Nazaryan and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing look at the Trump cabinet: the scandals, the incompetence, the assault on the federal government, the bungled attempts to impose order on an administration lost in a chaos of its own making. Donald Trump promised a return to national greatness, but each day of his presidency seems to bring a new crisis, a deepening sense of national unease. Why, and how, has he failed his supporters? And how has he, on occasion, bested his detractors? The Best People takes complete measure of the Trump administration, to grasp with clarity the president and his intentions, and how those intentions are being carried out-or subverted-by the people he has hired. Alexander Nazaryan argues that the "assault on the administrative state" promised by Steve Bannon in early 2017 never came. What the American people got instead was Wilbur Ross hauling his tennis pro to confirmation hearing preparations; Scott Pruitt running away from rattlesnakes; Reince Priebus enduring insults from junior White House staffers. And yet, bungling as Trump's cabinet members have been, they have managed to either damage or arrest many of the gears that make government run. They have given away public lands to oil companies and allowed corporate lobbyists to make decisions about what is best for the American people, and have done it all while flying on private jets and dining at the finest restaurants, at taxpayers' expense. Meticulously reported and enthrallingly told, The Best People takes readers inside the federal government under Trump's control, a government assailed by the very people charged to lead it, a government awash in confusion and corruption.

Book The Military Cabinet

Download or read book The Military Cabinet written by Thomas Hammont Cooper and published by . This book was released on 1809 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries

Download or read book Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries written by Dennis L. Peterson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-05-09 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of books have been written covering every aspect of the Civil War. Yet scant attention has been given to the civilian government of the Confederacy. The most recent book on the subject was published in 1944, and what little has been written since is scattered among various journals and magazines. Drawing on scholarship old and new, this book provides a detailed overview of each of the Confederacy's six executive departments, along with biographical sketches of each man who held a position in Jefferson Davis's cabinet, from Secretary of State to Postmaster General.

Book Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review

Download or read book Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review written by William S. Cohen and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every five years, DoD prepares a review of global defense capabilities extending to 2005 & beyond. This review focuses on the adjustment of forces to reflect the demise of the Warsaw Pact, reductions in DoD infrastructure, a service focus, & other changes. Contents: design, approach, & implementation of the Quadrennial Defense Review; the global security environment; defense strategy; alternative defense postures; forces & manpower; force readiness; transforming U.S. forces for the future; achieving a 21st century defense infrastructure; comments by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Glossary. Assessment by the Nat. Defense Panel.

Book Trump and His Generals

Download or read book Trump and His Generals written by Peter Bergen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's preeminent national security journalists, an explosive, news-breaking account of Donald Trump's collision with the American national security establishment, and with the world It is a simple fact that no president in American history brought less foreign policy experience to the White House than Donald J. Trump. The real estate developer from Queens promised to bring his brash, zero-sum swagger to bear to cut through America's most complex national security issues, and he did. If the cost of his "America First" agenda was bulldozing the edifice of foreign alliances that had been carefully tended by every president from Truman to Obama, then so be it. It was clear from the first that Trump's inclinations were radically more blunt force than his predecessors'. When briefed by the Pentagon on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, he exclaimed, "The next time Iran sends its boats into the Strait: blow them out of the water! Let's get Mad Dog on this." When told that the capital of South Korea, Seoul, was so close to the North Korean border that millions of people would likely die in the first hours of any all-out war, Trump had a bold response, "They have to move." The officials in the Oval Office weren't sure if he was joking. He raised his voice. "They have to move!" Very quickly, it became clear to a number of people at the highest levels of government that their gravest mission was to protect America from Donald Trump. Trump and His Generals is Peter Bergen's riveting account of what happened when the unstoppable force of President Trump met the immovable object of America's national security establishment--the CIA, the State Department, and, above all, the Pentagon. If there is a real "deep state" in DC, it is not the FBI so much as the national security community, with its deep-rooted culture and hierarchy. The men Trump selected for his key national security positions, Jim Mattis, John Kelly, and H. R. McMaster, were products of that culture: Trump wanted generals, and he got them. Three years later, they would be gone, and the guardrails were off. From Iraq and Afghanistan to Syria and Iran, from Russia and China to North Korea and Islamist terrorism, Trump and His Generals is a brilliant reckoning with an American ship of state navigating a roiling sea of threats without a well-functioning rudder. Lucid and gripping, it brings urgently needed clarity to issues that affect the fate of us all. But clarity, unfortunately, is not the same thing as reassurance.

Book Presidential Command

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter W. Rodman
  • Publisher : Vintage
  • Release : 2009-01-06
  • ISBN : 0307271285
  • Pages : 369 pages

Download or read book Presidential Command written by Peter W. Rodman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An official in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bush administrations, Peter W. Rodman draws on his firsthand knowledge of the Oval Office to explore the foreign-policy leadership of every president from Nixon to George W. Bush. This riveting and informative book about the inner workings of our government is rich with anecdotes and fly-on-the-wall portraits of presidents and their closest advisors. It is essential reading for historians, political junkies, and for anyone in charge of managing a large organization.

Book A Very Stable Genius

Download or read book A Very Stable Genius written by Philip Rucker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant #1 bestseller. “This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s presidency “I alone can fix it.” So proclaimed Donald J. Trump on July 21, 2016, accepting the Republican presidential nomination and promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet as he undertook the actual work of the commander in chief, it became nearly impossible to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. In fact, there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration was loyalty—not to the country, but to the president himself—and Trump’s North Star was always the perpetuation of his own power. With deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reveal the forty-fifth president up close. Here, for the first time, certain officials who felt honor-bound not to divulge what they witnessed in positions of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history. A peerless and gripping narrative, A Very Stable Genius not only reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished but shows how he tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.

Book American Ulysses

Download or read book American Ulysses written by Ronald C. White and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 866 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of A. Lincoln, a major new biography of one of America’s greatest generals—and most misunderstood presidents Winner of the William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography • Finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Military History Book Prize In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the “Trinity of Great American Leaders.” But the battlefield commander–turned–commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first. Based on seven years of research with primary documents—some of them never examined by previous Grant scholars—this is destined to become the Grant biography of our time. White, a biographer exceptionally skilled at writing momentous history from the inside out, shows Grant to be a generous, curious, introspective man and leader—a willing delegator with a natural gift for managing the rampaging egos of his fellow officers. His wife, Julia Dent Grant, long marginalized in the historic record, emerges in her own right as a spirited and influential partner. Grant was not only a brilliant general but also a passionate defender of equal rights in post-Civil War America. After winning election to the White House in 1868, he used the power of the federal government to battle the Ku Klux Klan. He was the first president to state that the government’s policy toward American Indians was immoral, and the first ex-president to embark on a world tour, and he cemented his reputation for courage by racing against death to complete his Personal Memoirs. Published by Mark Twain, it is widely considered to be the greatest autobiography by an American leader, but its place in Grant’s life story has never been fully explored—until now. One of those rare books that successfully recast our impression of an iconic historical figure, American Ulysses gives us a finely honed, three-dimensional portrait of Grant the man—husband, father, leader, writer—that should set the standard by which all future biographies of him will be measured. Praise for American Ulysses “[Ronald C. White] portrays a deeply introspective man of ideals, a man of measured thought and careful action who found himself in the crosshairs of American history at its most crucial moment.”—USA Today “White delineates Grant’s virtues better than any author before. . . . By the end, readers will see how fortunate the nation was that Grant went into the world—to save the Union, to lead it and, on his deathbed, to write one of the finest memoirs in all of American letters.”—The New York Times Book Review “Ronald White has restored Ulysses S. Grant to his proper place in history with a biography whose breadth and tone suit the man perfectly. Like Grant himself, this book will have staying power.”—The Wall Street Journal “Magisterial . . . Grant’s esteem in the eyes of historians has increased significantly in the last generation. . . . [American Ulysses] is the newest heavyweight champion in this movement.”—The Boston Globe “Superb . . . illuminating, inspiring and deeply moving.”—Chicago Tribune “In this sympathetic, rigorously sourced biography, White . . . conveys the essence of Grant the man and Grant the warrior.”—Newsday

Book The President  Vice President  and Cabinet

Download or read book The President Vice President and Cabinet written by Elaine Landau and published by Lerner Digital ™. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! What is the executive branch? It's the part of government that's led by our president. But who else is part of the executive branch? And just what does this branch do? Read this book to find out.

Book Ministers at War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jonathan Schneer
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2015-03-19
  • ISBN : 1780746148
  • Pages : 294 pages

Download or read book Ministers at War written by Jonathan Schneer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-03-19 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the defeat of France in May 1940, only one nation stood between Nazi Germany and total domination of Europe – Britain. This is the gripping story of Winston Churchill’s wartime government, an emergency coalition of Conservatives, Labour, Liberals and men of no party, assembled to see Britain through the war. A chronicle not only of their successful efforts to work together but also of quarrels, power plays, unexpected alliances and intrigue, it is an account of the most important political narrative of our time. With a cast of characters featuring some of the most famous names in twentieth-century British history, including Bevin, Attlee, Chamberlain, Beaverbrook, Morrison, Eden, Cripps – and of course Winston Churchill – this magisterial work provides a unique view of the inner machinations of Britain’s wartime cabinet. Dispelling that the War Cabinet constituted an unbreakable 'band of brothers', award-winning historian Jonathan Schneer reveals that this ensemble of political titans were in fact a ‘team of rivals’ that included four Prime Ministers – past, present and future. Both illuminating and engrossing, Ministers at War is the first work to draw upon original research to present a previously unseen perspective of British politics during and after World War II. Schneer shows us that just as the war had kept them together, the prospect of peace saw this supposedly unbreakable band fall apart, thus providing a fascinating insight into the birth of the Welfare State.

Book Rise of the Vulcans

    Book Details:
  • Author : James Mann
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2004-09-07
  • ISBN : 9780143034896
  • Pages : 468 pages

Download or read book Rise of the Vulcans written by James Mann and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-09-07 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When George W. Bush campaigned for the White House, he was such a novice in foreign policy that he couldn't name the president of Pakistan and momentarily suggested he thought the Taliban was a rock-and-roll band. But he relied upon a group called the Vulcans—an inner circle of advisers with a long, shared experience in government, dating back to the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and first Bush administrations. After returning to power in 2001, the Vulcans were widely expected to restore U.S. foreign policy to what it had been under George H. W. Bush and previous Republican administrations. Instead, the Vulcans put America on an entirely new and different course, adopting a far-reaching set of ideas that changed the world and America's role in it. Rise of the Vulcans is nothing less than a detailed, incisive thirty-five-year history of the top six members of the Vulcans—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice—and the era of American dominance they represent. It is the story of the lives, ideas and careers of Bush's war cabinet—the group of Washington insiders who took charge of America's response to September 11 and led the nation into its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Separately, each of these stories sheds astonishing light not only on the formative influences that brought these nascent leaders from obscurity to the pinnacle of power, but also on the experiences, conflicts and competitions that prefigured their actions on the present world stage. Taken together, the individuals in this book represent a unique generation in American history—a generation that might be compared to the "wise men" who shaped American policy after World War II or the "best and brightest" who prosecuted the war in Vietnam. Over the past three decades, since the time of Vietnam, these individuals have gradually led the way in shaping a new vision of an unchallengeable America seeking to dominate the globe through its military power.

Book The Black Cabinet

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jill Watts
  • Publisher : Atlantic Monthly Press
  • Release : 2020-05-12
  • ISBN : 0802146929
  • Pages : 640 pages

Download or read book The Black Cabinet written by Jill Watts and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth history exploring the evolution, impact, and ultimate demise of what was known in the 1930s and ‘40s as FDR’s Black Cabinet. In 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the help of key African American defectors from the Republican Party. At the time, most African Americans lived in poverty, denied citizenship rights and terrorized by white violence. As the New Deal began, a “black Brain Trust” joined the administration and began documenting and addressing the economic hardship and systemic inequalities African Americans faced. They became known as the Black Cabinet, but the environment they faced was reluctant, often hostile, to change. “Will the New Deal be a square deal for the Negro?” The black press wondered. The Black Cabinet set out to devise solutions to the widespread exclusion of black people from its programs, whether by inventing tools to measure discrimination or by calling attention to the administration’s failures. Led by Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, they were instrumental to Roosevelt’s continued success with black voters. Operating mostly behind the scenes, they helped push Roosevelt to sign an executive order that outlawed discrimination in the defense industry. They saw victories?jobs and collective agriculture programs that lifted many from poverty?and defeats?the bulldozing of black neighborhoods to build public housing reserved only for whites; Roosevelt’s refusal to get behind federal anti-lynching legislation. The Black Cabinet never won official recognition from the president, and with his death, it disappeared from view. But it had changed history. Eventually, one of its members would go on to be the first African American Cabinet secretary; another, the first African American federal judge and mentor to Thurgood Marshall. Masterfully researched and dramatically told, The Black Cabinet brings to life a forgotten generation of leaders who fought post-Reconstruction racial apartheid and whose work served as a bridge that Civil Rights activists traveled to achieve the victories of the 1950s and ’60s. Praise for The Black Cabinet “A dramatic piece of nonfiction that recovers the history of a generation of leaders that helped create the environment for the civil rights battles in decades that followed Roosevelt’s death.” —Library Journal “Fascinating . . . revealing the hidden figures of a ‘brain trust’ that lobbied, hectored and strong-armed President Franklin Roosevelt to cut African Americans in on the New Deal. . . . Meticulously researched and elegantly written, The Black Cabinet is sprawling and epic, and Watts deftly re-creates whole scenes from archival material.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Book Ways and Means

    Book Details:
  • Author : Roger Lowenstein
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2022-03-08
  • ISBN : 0735223564
  • Pages : 449 pages

Download or read book Ways and Means written by Roger Lowenstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Captivating . . . [Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.” —Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal “Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . . Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge.” —Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union” that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern “for” its people: it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback—paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North’s financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields. Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Book Call Sign Chaos

Download or read book Call Sign Chaos written by Jim Mattis and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A clear-eyed account of learning how to lead in a chaotic world, by General Jim Mattis—the former Secretary of Defense and one of the most formidable strategic thinkers of our time—and Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine. “A four-star general’s five-star memoir.”—The Wall Street Journal Call Sign Chaos is the account of Jim Mattis’s storied career, from wide-ranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding a quarter of a million troops across the Middle East. Along the way, Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas—and short-sighted thinking—now facing our nation. He makes it clear why America must return to a strategic footing so as not to continue winning battles but fighting inconclusive wars. Mattis divides his book into three parts: Direct Leadership, Executive Leadership, and Strategic Leadership. In the first part, Mattis recalls his early experiences leading Marines into battle, when he knew his troops as well as his own brothers. In the second part, he explores what it means to command thousands of troops and how to adapt your leadership style to ensure your intent is understood by your most junior troops so that they can own their mission. In the third part, Mattis describes the challenges and techniques of leadership at the strategic level, where military leaders reconcile war’s grim realities with political leaders’ human aspirations, where complexity reigns and the consequences of imprudence are severe, even catastrophic. Call Sign Chaos is a memoir of a life of warfighting and lifelong learning, following along as Mattis rises from Marine recruit to four-star general. It is a journey about learning to lead and a story about how he, through constant study and action, developed a unique leadership philosophy, one relevant to us all.

Book Lincoln  the Cabinet  and the Generals

Download or read book Lincoln the Cabinet and the Generals written by Chester G. Hearn and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While numerous accounts exist of President Abraham Lincoln's often-troubled dealings with either his cabinet or his generals, Chester G. Hearn's illuminating history provides the first broad synthesis of Lincoln's complex relationship with both groups. As such, it casts new light on much of the behind-the-scenes interplay, intrigue, and sparring between the president and his advisors and military commanders during the most precarious years of the Civil War. Turning first to Lincoln's cabinet, Hearn explains that Lincoln exercised a unique decision-making process: he reached a firm conclusion on an issue, but then he debated it endlessly with his cabinet or generals as if still undecided. To ensure the liveliest discourse, Lincoln appointed as his advisors men with widely differing political motivations. The Republican Lincoln spent four years attempting to bring together his cabinet of former Whigs and Democrats in the spirit of cooperation, but he never completely achieved his purpose. Hearn explores the president's relationship with this cabinet, the problems he encountered selecting it, and the difficulties he experienced attempting to maintain ideological balance while trying to maneuver around those who disagreed with him. Lincoln never broached a subject that did not create some level of dissent within the cabinet, and differences in political philosophy and personal rivalries led to great debate over the running of the administration, the selection of generals, foreign relations and military mobilization, emancipation, freedom of the press, civil rights, and other issues. Still, Hearn asserts, Lincoln's ability to navigate internal scuffles and external turmoil helped to define his presidency. Hearn next demonstrates convincingly that even with these difficulties, Lincoln manipulated his cabinet far more adroitly than he did his generals. Many of Lincoln's top military commanders had political aspirations or agendas of their own, while others were close friends of his intransigent cabinet members. Having assumed the role as de facto army chief, Lincoln took responsibility for the mishandling of battles fought by his generals, some of whom were incompetent and unmanageable politicians. Hearn examines the often-disastrous generalship and its impact on Lincoln and the cabinet, as well as the public, the press, and Congress. Based on over a decade of research, Lincoln, the Cabinet, and the Generals offers both a fresh perspective on and a new interpretation of Lincoln's presidency -- one that reveals the leadership genius as well as the imperfections of America's sixteenth president.