Download or read book Washington Through a Purple Veil written by Lindy Boggs and published by Niagara. This book was released on 1995-12 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At twenty-four, Lindy Boggs came to Washington, D.C., from Louisiana with her newly elected husband, Democratic Congressman Hale Boggs. FDR was starting his third term, Europe was at war, and Pearl Harbor was around the corner. She has been there ever since, playing an integral role in the key events of the last half century. Now, in Washington Through a Purple Veil, Congresswoman Lindy Boggs shares the triumphs as well as the trials of living a life of public service. In this intimate memoir - rich with anecdotes about "official" and "unofficial" Washington and illustrated with over thirty photographs from her personal collection - Lindy Boggs speaks about her congressional tenure, her family life, the faith that has sustained her through the disappearance of her husband and the death of her daughter, and all that is meaningful to her.

Download or read book The Wolves of K Street written by Brody Mullins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two veteran investigative journalists trace the rise of the modern lobbying industry through the three dynasties—one Republican, two Democratic—that have enabled corporate interests to infiltrate American politics and undermine our democracy. On K Street, a few blocks from the White House, you’ll find the offices of the most powerful men in Washington. In the 1970s, the city’s center of gravity began to shift away from elected officials in big marble buildings to a handful of savvy, handsomely paid operators who didn’t answer to any fixed constituency. The cigar-chomping son of a powerful Congressman, an illustrious political fixer with a weakness for modern art, a Watergate-era dirty trickster, the city’s favorite cocktail party host…these were the sorts of men who now ran Washington. Over four decades, they’d chart new ways to turn their clients’ cash into political leverage, abandoning favor-trading in smoke-filled rooms for increasingly sophisticated tactics like “shadow lobbying,” where underground campaigns sparked seemingly organic public outcries to pressure lawmakers into taking actions that would ultimately benefit corporate interests rather than the common good. With billions of dollars at play, these lobbying dynasties enshrined in Washington a pro-business consensus that would guide the country’s political leaders—Democrats and Republicans alike—allowing companies to flourish even as ordinary Americans buckled under the weight of stagnant wages, astronomical drug prices, unsafe home loans, and digital monopolies. A good lobbyist could kill even a piece of legislation supported by the president, both houses of Congress, and a majority of Americans. Yet, nothing lasts forever. Amidst a populist backlash to the soaring inequality these lobbyists helped usher in, Washington’s pro-business alliance suddenly began to unravel. And while new ways for corporations to control the federal government would emerge, the men who’d once built K Street found themselves under legal scrutiny and on the verge of financial collapse. One had his namesake firm ripped away by his own colleagues. Another watched his business shut down altogether. One went to prison. And one was found dead behind the 18th green of an exclusive golf club, with a bottle of $1,500 wine at his feet and a bullet in his head. A dazzling and infuriating portrait of fifty years of corporate influence in Washington, The Wolves of K Street is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction—irresistibly dramatic, spectacularly timely, explosive in its revelations, and absolutely impossible to put down.

Download or read book Louisiana Women written by Janet Allured and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlights the significant historical contributions of some of Louisiana's most noteworthy and also overlooked women from the eighteenth century to the present. This volume underscores the cultural, social, and political distinctiveness of the state and showcases how these women affected its history.

Download or read book Losing the Center written by Jeffrey Bloodworth and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-07 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Americans consider John F. Kennedy's presidency to represent the apex of American liberalism. Kennedy's "Vital Center" blueprint united middle-class and working-class Democrats and promoted freedom abroad while recognizing the limits of American power. Liberalism thrived in the early 1960s, but its heyday was short-lived. In Losing the Center, Jeffrey Bloodworth demonstrates how and why the once-dominant ideology began its steep decline, exploring its failures through the biographies of some of the Democratic Party's most important leaders, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Bella Abzug, Harold Ford Sr., and Jimmy Carter. By illuminating historical events through the stories of the people at the center of the action, Bloodworth sheds new light on topics such as feminism, the environment, the liberal abandonment of the working class, and civil rights legislation. This meticulously researched study authoritatively argues that liberalism's demise was prompted not by a "Republican revolution" or the mistakes of a few prominent politicians, but instead by decades of ideological incoherence and political ineptitude among liberals. Bloodworth demonstrates that Democrats caused their own party's decline by failing to realize that their policies contradicted the priorities of mainstream voters, who were more concerned about social issues than economic ones. With its unique biographical approach and masterful use of archival materials, this detailed and accessible book promises to stand as one of the definitive texts on the state of American liberalism in the second half of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Women in Congress 1917 2006 written by Matthew Andrew Wasniewski and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 1020 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains profiles, contextual essays, historical images, and appendices that provide information about the 229 women who have served in Congress from 1917 through 2006.

Download or read book Lady Bird Johnson Hiding in Plain Sight written by Julia Sweig and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A revelation . . . a book in the Caro mold, using Lady Bird, along with tapes and transcripts of her entire White House diary, to tell the history of America during the Johnson years.”—The New York Times The inspiration for the documentary film The Lady Bird Diaries, premiering November 13 on Hulu Perhaps the most underestimated First Lady of the twentieth century, Lady Bird Johnson was also one of the most powerful. In Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight, Julia Sweig reveals how indispensable the First Lady was to Lyndon Johnson’s administration—which Lady Bird called “our” presidency. In addition to advising him through critical moments, she took on her own policy initiatives, including the most ambitious national environmental effort since Theodore Roosevelt and a virtually unknown initiative to desegregate access to public recreation and national parks in Washington, D.C. Where no presidential biographer has understood Lady Bird’s full impact, Julia Sweig is the first to draw substantially on her White House diaries and to place her center stage. In doing so, Sweig reveals a woman ahead of her time—and an accomplished strategist and politician in her own right. Winner of the Texas Book Award • Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bogard Weld Award

Download or read book Women Politicians and the Media written by Maria Braden and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-09-15 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All American politicians face the glare of media coverage, both in running for office and in representing their constituents if elected. But for women seeking or holding high public office, as Maria Braden demonstrates, the scrutiny by newspapers and television can be both withering and damaging—a fact that has changed little over the decades despite the emergence of more women in politics and more women in the news media. Particularly disturbing is the fact that the increase in the number of women reporters appears to have had little effect on the way women candidates are portrayed in the media. Some women reporters, in fact, seem intent on proving that they can be just as tough on women candidates as their male counterparts, thus perpetuating the misrepresentations of the past. Braden examines the political fortunes of Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House; those of the congressional "glamour girls" of the 1940s, Clare Boothe Luce and Helen Gahagan Douglas; the long Senate career of Margaret Chase Smith; the political struggles of diverse women of more recent decades, including Bella Abzug, Elizabeth Holtzman, Nancy Kassebaum, Barbara Jordan, Dianne Feinstein, and Ann Richards; and the disastrous vice presidential bid of Geraldine Ferraro. Braden traces a persistent double standard in media coverage of women's political campaigns through the past eighty years. Journalists dwell on the candidates' novelty in public office and describe them in ways that stereotype and trivialize them. Especially demeaning are comments on women's appearance, personality, and family connections— comments of a sort that would rarely be made about men candidates. Are they too pretty or too plain? What do their clothes say about them? Are they "feminine" enough or "too masculine"? Are they still just ordinary housewives or are they neglecting their families by heading for Washington or the state house? Braden's study is based on both media accounts and the revealing personal interviews she conducted with a broad range of recent women politicians, including Margaret Chase Smith, Bella Abzug, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Nancy Kassebaum, and Ann Richards. All describe agonizing struggles to get across to the public the message that they are serious and competent candidates capable of holding high office and shaping our nation's course.

Download or read book How Can I Find God written by James Martin and published by St Pauls BYB. This book was released on 2014 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Composing Selves written by Peggy Whitman Prenshaw and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2011-06-16 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Composing Selves, award-winning author Peggy Whitman Prenshaw provides the most comprehensive treatment of autobiographies by women in the American South. This long-anticipated addition to Prenshaw's study of southern literature spans the twentieth century as she provides an in-depth look at the life-writing of eighteen women authors. Composing Selves travels the wide terrain of female life in the South, analyzing various issues that range from racial consciousness to the deflection of personal achievement. All of the authors presented came of age during the era Prenshaw refers to as the "late southern Victorian period," which began in 1861 and ended in the 1930s. Belle Kearney's A Slaveholder's Daughter (1900) with Elizabeth Spencer's Landscapes of the Heart and Ellen Douglas's Truth: Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough to Tell (both published in 1998) chronologically bookend Prenshaw's survey. She includes Ellen Glasgow's The Woman Within, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's Cross Creek, Bernice Kelly Harris's Southern Savory, and Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road. The book also examines Katharine DuPre Lumpkin's The Making of a Southerner and Lillian Smith's Killers of the Dream. In addition to exploring multiple themes, Prenshaw considers a number of types of autobiographies, such as Helen Keller's classic The Story of My Life and Anne Walter Fearn's My Days of Strength. She treats narratives of marital identity, as in Mary Hamilton's Trials of the Earth, and calls attention to works by women who devoted their lives to social and political movements, like Virginia Durr's Outside the Magic Circle. Drawing on many notable authors and on Prenshaw's own life of scholarship, Composing Selves provides an invaluable contribution to the study of southern literature, autobiography, and the work of southern women writers.

Download or read book The Booklover s Guide to New Orleans written by Susan Larson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literary tradition of New Orleans spans centuries and touches every genre; its living heritage winds through storied neighborhoods and is celebrated at numerous festivals across the city. For booklovers, a visit to the Big Easy isn't complete without whiling away the hours in an antiquarian bookstore in the French Quarter or stepping out on a literary walking tour. Perhaps only among the oak-lined avenues, Creole town houses, and famed hotels of New Orleans can the lust of A Streetcar Named Desire, the zaniness of A Confederacy of Dunces, the chill of Interview with the Vampire, and the heartbreak of Walker Percy's Moviegoer begin to resonate. Susan Larson's revised and updated edition of The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans not only explores the legacy of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner, but also visits the haunts of celebrated writers of today, including Anne Rice and James Lee Burke. This definitive guide provides a key to the books, authors, festivals, stores, and famed addresses that make the Crescent City a literary destination.

Download or read book John William McCormack written by Garrison Nelson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first biography of U.S. House Speaker John W. McCormack, author Garrison Nelson uncovers previously forgotten FBI files, birth and death records, and correspondence long thought lost or buried. For such an influential figure, McCormack tried to dismiss the past, almost erasing his legacy from the public's mind. John William McCormack: A Political Biography sheds light on the behind-the-curtain machinations of American politics and the origins of the modern-day Democratic party, facilitated through McCormack's triumphs. McCormack overcame desperate poverty and family tragedy in the Irish ghetto of South Boston to hold the second-most powerful position in the nation. By reinventing his family history to elude Irish Boston's powerful political gatekeepers, McCormack embarked on a 1928 - 1971 House career and from 1939-71, the longest house leadership career. Working with every president from Coolidge to Nixon, McCormack's social welfare agenda, which included Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, immigration reform, and civil rights legislation helped commit the nation to the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens. By helping create the Austin-Boston Connection, McCormack reshaped the Democratic Party from a regional southern white Protestant party to one that embraced urban religiously and racially diverse ethnics. A man free of prejudice, John McCormack was the Boston Brahmin's favorite Irishman, the South's favorite northerner, and known in Boston as "Rabbi John," the Jews' favorite Catholic.

Download or read book The White House Looks South written by William Edward Leuchtenburg and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At a time when race, class, and gender dominate historical writing, Leuchtenburg argues that place is no less significant. In a period when America is said to be homogenized, he shows that sectional distinctions persist. And in an era when political history is devalued, he demonstrates that government can profoundly affect people's lives and that presidents can be change-makers."--Jacket.

Download or read book Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth written by Stephen F. Knott and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2002-02-15 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth explores the shifting reputation of our most controversial founding father. Since the day Aaron Burr fired his fatal shot, Americans have tried to come to grips with Alexander Hamilton's legacy. Stephen Knott surveys the Hamilton image in the minds of American statesmen, scholars, literary figures, and the media, explaining why Americans are content to live in a Hamiltonian nation but reluctant to embrace the man himself. Knott observes that Thomas Jefferson and his followers, and, later, Andrew Jackson and his adherents, tended to view Hamilton and his principles as "un-American." While his policies generated mistrust in the South and the West, where he is still seen as the founding "plutocrat," Hamilton was revered in New England and parts of the Mid-Atlantic states. Hamilton's image as a champion of American nationalism caused his reputation to soar during the Civil War, at least in the North. However, in the wake of Gilded Age excesses, progressive and populist political leaders branded Hamilton as the patron saint of Wall Street, and his reputation began to disintegrate. Hamilton's status reached its nadir during the New Deal, Knott argues, when Franklin Roosevelt portrayed him as the personification of Dickensian cold-heartedness. When FDR erected the beautiful Tidal Basin monument to Thomas Jefferson and thereby elevated the Sage of Monticello into the American Pantheon, Hamilton, as Jefferson's nemesis, fell into disrepute. He came to epitomize the forces of reaction contemptuous of the "great beast"-the American people. In showing how the prevailing negative assessment misrepresents the man and his deeds, Knott argues for reconsideration of Hamiltonianism, which rightly understood has much to offer the American polity of the twenty-first century. Remarkably, at the dawn of the new millennium, the nation began to see Hamilton in a different light. Hamilton's story was now the embodiment of the American dream-an impoverished immigrant who came to the United States and laid the economic and political foundation that paved the way for America's superpower status. Here in Stephen Knott's insightful study, Hamilton finally gets his due as a highly contested but powerful and positive presence in American national life.

Download or read book Russell Long written by Michael S. Martin and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014-05-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russell Long (1918-2003) occupies a unique niche in twentieth-century United States history. Born into Louisiana's most influential political family, and son of perhaps the most famous Louisianan of all time, Long extended the political power generated by other members of his family and attained heights of power unknown to his predecessors, including his father, Huey. The Long family and its followers pervaded Louisiana politics from the late 1920s through the 1980s. Being a Long--especially a son of Huey Long--preordained Russell for a political life. His father's assassination set the wheels in motion for his eventual political career. In 1948, Russell followed his father and his mother to a seat in the United States Senate. In due course, he rose to the politically eminent positions of majority whip and chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Russell Long: A Life in Politics examines Long's public life and places it within the context of twentieth-century Louisiana, southern, and national politics. In Louisiana, Long's politics arose out of the Longite/ Anti-Longite period of history. Yet he transcended many of those two groups' factional squabbles. In the national realm, Long's politics exhibited a working philosophy that straddled the boundaries between New Deal liberalism and southern conservatism. By the time of his retirement in early 1987, he had witnessed the demise of one political paradigm--the New Deal liberal consensus--and the creation of one dominated by a new style of conservatism.

Download or read book Inventing Al Gore written by Bill Turque and published by HMH. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “balanced, insightful” biography of the politician that “shows how the pressure to succeed has shaped virtually every aspect of Gore’s career” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Why did Al Gore, after angry opposition to the Vietnam War, submit to the draft? What happened in Vietnam that made him sullen and bitter? After he renounced politics, what set this son of a Tennessee senator back on the track mapped out for him? What was the real nature of his partnership with Bill Clinton, and how was it altered by the Lewinsky affair? Inventing Al Gore addresses these issues and more as it unveils the true motivations, ideals, and idiosyncrasies of one of America’s most inscrutable political figures. Bill Turque, who covered both of Gore’s vice presidential campaigns and the Clinton White House, draws on extensive access to Gore’s key advisers, friends, and family. He unmasks a man who in private can sing and dance to George Strait’s music but in public measures every comment and gesture with legendary caution. As Turque details, Gore’s great political albatross—a lack of empathy—was hatched during his lonely childhood as the product of ambitious political parents who groomed him for the presidency. Turque’s keen analysis also uncovers the genesis of Gore’s questionable fund-raising and of a political platform laden with worthy but emotionally safe planks such as bioethics and global warming. In addition, Inventing Al Gore illuminates how personal tragedies have shaped his political life—and the remarkable influence that women, from his mother to Naomi Wolf, have had on his career. “Refreshing . . . Turque finds [Gore] to be like so many of the rest of us—occasionally decent, usually flawed, always conflicted.” —Newsday

Download or read book Susan Linda Nina Cokie written by Lisa Napoli and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism, covered decades of American news, and whose voices defined NPR In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges. Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network's legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court. Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author’s deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.

Download or read book Conversations with My Grandfather written by Wink Dameron and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These first hand stories reflect the actual true-life experiences of a prominent Louisiana statesman, Civil War veteran and District Judge, L.B. Claiborne of New Roads, La. These are stories, as told to his granddaughter during a two-year period, reflecting the strength of character that has been passed onto his decedents down through generations. The stories cover the time Judge Claiborne spent as a Georgetown Military Academy cadet in Washington, D.C., the four years during which he served as an infantryman in the Civil War, and the many following years as a prominent legislator, district judge, educator, newspaper owner and statesman. Through his fathers friendship with two different Presidents of the United States and other prominent national personalities, he enjoyed many unique experiences involving fascinating people covering many yet untold stories. These stories, as shared with his granddaughter, reflect the strength of character that has become a hallmark in the lives of his descendants. It is fascinating to be taken back to another era, as seen through the eyes of a true Southern gentleman.