Download or read book A Man and His Presidents written by Alvin Felzenberg and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new understanding of the man who changed the face of American politics William F. Buckley Jr. is widely regarded as the most influential American conservative writer, activist, and organizer in the postwar era. In this nuanced biography, Alvin Felzenberg sheds light on little-known aspects of Buckley’s career, including his role as back-channel adviser to policy makers, his intimate friendship with both Ronald and Nancy Reagan, his changing views on civil rights, and his break with George W. Bush over the Iraq War. Felzenberg demonstrates how Buckley conveyed his message across multiple platforms and drew upon his vast network of contacts, his personal charm, his extraordinary wit, and his celebrity status to move the center of political gravity in the United States closer to his point of view. Including many rarely seen photographs, this account of one of the most compelling personalities of American politics will appeal to conservatives, liberals, and even the apolitical.
Download or read book Accidental Presidents written by Jared Cohen and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This New York Times bestselling “deep dive into the terms of eight former presidents is chock-full of political hijinks—and déjà vu” (Vanity Fair) and provides a fascinating look at the men who came to the office without being elected to it, showing how each affected the nation and world. The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Eight men have succeeded to the presidency when the incumbent died in office. In one way or another they vastly changed our history. Only Theodore Roosevelt would have been elected in his own right. Only TR, Truman, Coolidge, and LBJ were re-elected. John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died 30 days into his term. He was kicked out of his party and became the first president threatened with impeachment. Millard Fillmore succeeded esteemed General Zachary Taylor. He immediately sacked the entire cabinet and delayed an inevitable Civil War by standing with Henry Clay’s compromise of 1850. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded our greatest president, sided with remnants of the Confederacy in Reconstruction. Chester Arthur, the embodiment of the spoils system, was so reviled as James Garfield’s successor that he had to defend himself against plotting Garfield’s assassination; but he reformed the civil service. Theodore Roosevelt broke up the trusts. Calvin Coolidge silently cooled down the Harding scandals and preserved the White House for the Republican Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Harry Truman surprised everybody when he succeeded the great FDR and proved an able and accomplished president. Lyndon B. Johnson was named to deliver Texas electorally. He led the nation forward on Civil Rights but failed on Vietnam. Accidental Presidents shows that “history unfolds in death as well as in life” (The Wall Street Journal) and adds immeasurably to our understanding of the power and limits of the American presidency in critical times.
Download or read book William McKinley written by Kevin Phillips and published by Times Books. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestselling historian and political commentator reconsiders McKinley's overshadowed legacy By any serious measurement, bestselling historian Kevin Phillips argues, William McKinley was a major American president. It was during his administration that the United States made its diplomatic and military debut as a world power. McKinley was one of eight presidents who, either in the White House or on the battlefield, stood as principals in successful wars, and he was among the six or seven to take office in what became recognized as a major realignment of the U.S. party system. Phillips, author of Wealth and Democracy and The Cousins' War, has long been fascinated with McKinley in the context of how the GOP began each of its cycles of power. He argues that McKinley's lackluster ratings have been sustained not by unjust biographers but by years of criticism about his personality, indirect methodologies, middle-class demeanor, and tactical inability to inspire the American public. In this powerful and persuasive biography, Phillips musters convincing evidence that McKinley's desire to heal, renew prosperity, and reunite the country qualify him for promotion into the ranks of the best chief executives.
Download or read book Martin Van Buren written by Edward L. Widmer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-01-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first president born after America's independence ushers in a new era of no-holds-barred democracy The first "professional politician" to become president, the slick and dandyish Martin Van Buren was to all appearances the opposite of his predecessor, the rugged general and Democratic champion Andrew Jackson. Van Buren, a native Dutch speaker, was America's first ethnic president as well as the first New Yorker to hold the office, at a time when Manhattan was bursting with new arrivals. A sharp and adroit political operator, he established himself as a powerhouse in New York, becoming a U.S. senator, secretary of state, and vice president under Jackson, whose election he managed. His ascendancy to the Oval Office was virtually a foregone conclusion. Once he had the reins of power, however, Van Buren found the road quite a bit rougher. His attempts to find a middle ground on the most pressing issues of his day-such as the growing regional conflict over slavery-eroded his effectiveness. But it was his inability to prevent the great banking panic of 1837, and the ensuing depression, that all but ensured his fall from grace and made him the third president to be denied a second term. His many years of outfoxing his opponents finally caught up with him. Ted Widmer, a veteran of the Clinton White House, vividly brings to life the chaos and contention that plagued Van Buren's presidency-and ultimately offered an early lesson in the power of democracy.
Download or read book The President s Man written by Dwight Chapin and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In time for the 50th anniversary of President Nixon’s epic trips to China and Russia, as well as his incredible Watergate downfall, the man who was at his side for a decade as his aide and White House Deputy takes readers inside the life and administration of Richard Nixon. From Richard Nixon’s “You-won’t-have-Nixon-to-kick-around-anymore” 1962 gubernatorial campaign through his world-changing trips to China and the Soviet Union and epic downfall, Dwight Chapin was by his side. As his personal aide and then Deputy Assistant in the White House Chapin was with him in his most private and most public moments. He traveled with him, assisted, advised, strategized, campaigned and learned from America’s most controversial president. As Bob Haldeman’s protege, Chapin worked with Henry Kissinger in opening China—then eventually went to prison for Watergate although he had no involvement in it. In this memoir Chapin takes readers on an extraordinary historic journey; presenting an insider’s view of America’s most enigmatic President. Chapin will relate his memorable experiences with the people who shaped the future: Henry Kissinger, his close friend Bob Haldeman, Choi En-lai, Pat Nixon, the embittered Spiro Agnew, J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, Mark "Deep Throat" Felt, young and ambitious Roger Ailes, and John Dean. It’s a story that ranges from Coretta Scott King to Elvis Presley, from the wonder of entering a closed Chinese society to the Oval Office, and concludes with startling new insights and conclusions about the break-in that brought down Nixon’s presidency.
Download or read book Theodore Roosevelt written by Louis Auchincloss and published by Times Books. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate portrait of the first president of the 20th century The American century opened with the election of that quintessentially American adventurer, Theodore Roosevelt. Louis Auchincloss's warm and knowing biography introduces us to the man behind the many myths of Theodore Roosevelt. From his early involvement in the politics of New York City and then New York State, we trace his celebrated military career and finally his ascent to the national political stage. Caricatured through history as the "bull moose," Roosevelt was in fact a man of extraordinary discipline whose refined and literate tastes actually helped spawn his fascination with the rough-and-ready worlds of war and wilderness. Bringing all his novelist's skills to the task, Auchincloss briskly recounts the significant contributions of Roosevelt's career and administration. This biography is as thorough as it is readable, as clear-eyed as it is touching and personal.
Download or read book Herbert Hoover written by William E. Leuchtenburg and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Republican efficiency expert whose economic boosterism met its match in the Great Depression Catapulted into national politics by his heroic campaigns to feed Europe during and after World War I, Herbert Hoover—an engineer by training—exemplified the economic optimism of the 1920s. As president, however, Hoover was sorely tested by America's first crisis of the twentieth century: the Great Depression. Renowned New Deal historian William E. Leuchtenburg demonstrates how Hoover was blinkered by his distrust of government and his belief that volunteerism would solve all social ills. As Leuchtenburg shows, Hoover's attempts to enlist the aid of private- sector leaders did little to mitigate the Depression, and he was routed from office by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. From his retirement at Stanford University, Hoover remained a vocal critic of the New Deal and big government until the end of his long life. Leuchtenburg offers a frank, thoughtful portrait of this lifelong public servant, and shrewdly assesses Hoover's policies and legacy in the face of one of the darkest periods of American history.
Download or read book The American President written by William E. Leuchtenburg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 903 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American President is an enthralling account of American presidential actions from the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 to Bill Clinton's last night in office in January 2001. William Leuchtenburg, one of the great presidential historians of the century, portrays each of the presidents in a chronicle sparkling with anecdote and wit. Leuchtenburg offers a nuanced assessment of their conduct in office, preoccupations, and temperament. His book presents countless moments of high drama: FDR hurling defiance at the "economic royalists" who exploited the poor; ratcheting tension for JFK as Soviet vessels approach an American naval blockade; a grievously wounded Reagan joking with nurses while fighting for his life. This book charts the enormous growth of presidential power from its lowly state in the late nineteenth century to the imperial presidency of the twentieth. That striking change was manifested both at home in periods of progressive reform and abroad, notably in two world wars, Vietnam, and the war on terror. Leuchtenburg sheds light on presidents battling with contradictory forces. Caught between maintaining their reputation and executing their goals, many practiced deceits that shape their image today. But he also reveals how the country's leaders pulled off magnificent achievements worthy of the nation's pride.
Download or read book William Howard Taft written by Jeffrey Rosen and published by Times Books. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only man to serve as president and chief justice, who approached every decision in constitutional terms, defending the Founders’ vision against new populist threats to American democracy William Howard Taft never wanted to be president and yearned instead to serve as chief justice of the United States. But despite his ambivalence about politics, the former federal judge found success in the executive branch as governor of the Philippines and secretary of war, and he won a resounding victory in the presidential election of 1908 as Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked successor. In this provocative assessment, Jeffrey Rosen reveals Taft’s crucial role in shaping how America balances populism against the rule of law. Taft approached each decision as president by asking whether it comported with the Constitution, seeking to put Roosevelt’s activist executive orders on firm legal grounds. But unlike Roosevelt, who thought the president could do anything the Constitution didn’t forbid, Taft insisted he could do only what the Constitution explicitly allowed. This led to a dramatic breach with Roosevelt in the historic election of 1912, which Taft viewed as a crusade to defend the Constitution against the demagogic populism of Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Nine years later, Taft achieved his lifelong dream when President Warren Harding appointed him chief justice, and during his years on the Court he promoted consensus among the justices and transformed the judiciary into a modern, fully equal branch. Though he had chafed in the White House as a judicial president, he thrived as a presidential chief justice.
Download or read book All the President s Women written by Barry Levine and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With groundbreaking interviews, behind-the-scenes reporting, and never-before-seen photos, All the President's Women records 43 new allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump, including that of E. Jean Carroll, the woman at the center of the civil trial that found Trump liable for sexual abuse in 2023. During his 2016 presidential run, the revelation of the Access Hollywood tape and subsequent allegations of sexual misconduct lodged against Donald Trump looked like they might doom his candidacy. Trump survived, and the first two years of the real estate scion's presidency were marked not by controversy over his behavior around women but by the Mueller investigation. Outside of being found liable for sexual abuse in a 2023 civil trial that awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages, Trump has widely dodged the #MeToo bullet that has taken down so many once-powerful men. But despite the decades of tabloid fascination with his personal life, the story of Trump's relationship with women has never been fully told. Considering his bully pulpit in the White House, the reckoning is overdue. All the President's Women offers the most detailed account yet of Trump's history with women, dating back to his childhood and high school days through his rise in real estate, reality TV, and politics. This book will show that Trump's behavior goes far beyond occasional "locker-room talk" and unwanted advances. Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy detail more than a dozen new allegations against Trump, including a disturbing attack on a woman at Mar-a-Lago, an incident at a private Manhattan sex club involving a teenage girl, as well as Trump's behavior at fashion shows and beauty pageants--events that gave the future president a hunting ground to harass young women. Veteran journalists Levine and El-Faizy tell the story of Trump from the point of view of the women in his orbit--wives, mistresses, playmates, and those whom the president has dated, kissed, groped, or lusted after.
Download or read book All Too Human written by George Stephanopoulos and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All Too Human is a new-generation political memoir, written from the refreshing perspective of one who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age. At thirty, the author was at Bill Clinton's side during the presidential campaign of 1992, & for the next five years he was rarely more than a step away from the president & his other advisers at every important moment of the first term. What Liar's Poker did to Wall Street, this book will do to politics. It is an irreverent & intimate portrait of how the nation's weighty business is conducted by people whose egos & idiosyncrasies are no sturdier than anyone else's. Including sharp portraits of the Clintons, Al Gore, Dick Morris, Colin Powell, & scores of others, as well as candid & revelatory accounts of the famous debacles & triumphs of an administration that constantly went over the top, All Too Human is, like its author, a brilliant combination of pragmatic insight & idealism. It is destined to be the most important & enduring book to come out of the Clinton administration.
Download or read book The Unmaking of a Mayor written by William F. Buckley Jr. and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John V. Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City in 1965. But that year’s mayoral campaign will forever be known as the Buckley campaign. “As a candidate,” Joseph Alsop conceded, “Buckley was cleverer and livelier than either of his rivals.” And Murray Kempton concluded that “The process which coarsens every other man who enters it has only refined Mr. Buckley.” The Unmaking of a Mayor is a time capsule of the political atmosphere of America in the spring of 1965, diagnosing the multitude of ills that plagued New York and other major cities: crime, narcotics, transportation, racial bias, mismanagement, taxes, and the problems of housing, police, and education. Buckley’s nimble dissection of these issues constitutes an excellent primer of conservative thought. A good pathologist, Buckley shows that the diseases afflicting New York City in 1965 were by no means of a unique strain, and compared them with issues that beset the country at large. Buckley offers a prescient vision of the Republican Party and America’s two-party system that will be of particular interest to today’s conservatives. The Unmaking of a Mayor ends with a wistful glance at what might have been in 1965—and what might yet be.
Download or read book The Presidents Club written by Nancy Gibbs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines presidential power within the context of U.S. history and the ongoing relationships presidents and ex-presidents formed with one another.
Download or read book Everett Dirksen and His Presidents written by Byron C. Hulsey and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was as recognizable by his mellifluous voice as by his rumpled appearance. Everett McKinley Dirksen was one of the most colorful American politicians of the twentieth century and was considered by some the most powerful man in Congress. Now Byron Hulsey takes a new look at the senator from Illinois to show how his interactions with the White House made him a pivotal figure in American politics during the Cold War era. Hulsey traces Dirksen's relationships with four presidents to show how the senator shifted from being a major Republican critic of Truman to an ardent Republican supporter of LBJ. Dirksen learned "suprapartisan politics" from Eisenhower and became Ike's most trusted confidant on Capitol Hill; then as Senate Minority Leader he played a key role in furthering the ambitious goals of the Johnson administration. Hulsey analyzes the reasons for Dirksen's dramatic policy reversals, telling how the senator who in 1950 warned of the dangers of a leviathan executive came to embrace the power of the presidential office to provide for the social welfare, contain the spread of communism, and guarantee civil rights. Drawing on primary sources at the Johnson presidential library and the Dirksen Congressional Center, Hulsey shows how the senator combined legislative craftsmanship with the ability to get bills passed. He links Dirksen to the issues and events that shaped the 1950s and 1960s and tells how the Johnson-Dirksen coalition moved domestic policy forward through civil rights legislation but ran aground on the insurmountable problem of Vietnam. Hulsey also uses Dirksen's career to explore change, continuity, and conflict in the Republican Party over two decades. He explains how the GOP evolved through internal political and ideological tensions from the Taft-Eisenhower contest through the McCarthy era to the beginning of Nixon administration, revealing Dirksen's role in that process. By the time of Dirksen's death in 1969, the Vietnam War, the explosion of urban riots, and President Nixon's preference for the politics of resentment put an end to the suprapartisan spirit. Hulsey's book recreates a Washington milieu the likes of which may never be seen again, offering a lens for viewing postwar American politics while painting the definitive political portrait of one of our most remarkable leaders.
Download or read book Measure of a Man written by Martin Greenfield and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He's been called "America's greatest living tailor" and "the most interesting man in the world." Now, for the first time, Holocaust-survivor Martin Greenfield tells his whole, incredible life story. Taken from his Czechoslovakian home at age fifteen and transported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz with his family, Greenfield came face-to-face with "Angel of Death" Dr. Joseph Mengele and was divided forever from his parents, sisters, and baby brother. In haunting, powerful prose, Greenfield remembers his desperation and fear as a teenager alone in the death camp--and how an impulsive decision to steal an SS soldier's shirt dramatically altered the course of his life. He learned how to sew; and when he began wearing the shirt under his prisoner uniform, he learned that clothes possess great power and could even help save his life. Measure of a Man is the story of a man who suffered unimaginable horror and emerged with a dream of success. From sweeping floors at a New York clothing factory to founding America’s premier handmade suit company, Greenfield built a fashion empire. Now 86-years-old and working with his sons, Greenfield has dressed the famous and powerful of D.C. and Hollywood, including Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama and celebrities Paul Newman, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jimmy Fallon. Written with soul-baring honesty and, at times, a wry sense of humor, Measure of a Man is a memoir unlike any other--one that will inspire hope and renew faith in the resilience of man.
Download or read book The Book of the Presidents written by Vincent Wilson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reference and souvenir volume with biographes and gallery portraits of all the Presidents
Download or read book Author in Chief written by Craig Fehrman and published by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the best books on the American presidency to appear in recent years.” —Thomas Mallon, The Wall Street Journal “Fun and fascinating…It’s witty, charming, and fantastically learned. I loved it.” —Rick Perlstein Based on a decade of research and reporting, Author in Chief tells the story of America’s presidents as authors—and offers a delightful new window into the public and private lives of our highest leaders. Most Americans are familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s famous words in the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet few can name the work that helped him win the presidency: his published collection of speeches entitled Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln labored in secret to get his book ready for the 1860 election, tracking down newspaper transcripts, editing them carefully for fairness, and hunting for a printer who would meet his specifications. Political Debates sold fifty thousand copies—the rough equivalent of half a million books in today’s market—and it reveals something about Lincoln’s presidential ambitions. But it also reveals something about his heart and mind. When voters asked about his beliefs, Lincoln liked to point them to his book. In Craig Fehrman’s groundbreaking work of history, Author in Chief, the story of America’s presidents and their books opens a rich new window into presidential biography. From volumes lost to history—Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography, which was one of the most widely discussed titles of 1929—to ones we know and love—Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, which was very nearly never published—Fehrman unearths countless insights about the presidents through their literary works. Presidential books have made an enormous impact on American history, catapulting their authors to the national stage and even turning key elections. Beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, the first presidential book to influence a campaign, and John Adams’s Autobiography, the first score-settling presidential memoir, Author in Chief draws on newly uncovered information—including never-before-published letters from Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan—to cast fresh light on the private drives and self-doubts that fueled our nation’s leaders. We see Teddy Roosevelt as a vulnerable first-time author, struggling to write the book that would become a classic of American history. We see Reagan painstakingly revising Where’s the Rest of Me?, a forgotten memoir in which he sharpened his sunny political image. We see Donald Trump negotiating the deal for The Art of the Deal, the volume that made him synonymous with business savvy. Alongside each of these authors, we also glimpse the everyday Americans who read them. Combining the narrative felicity of a journalist with the rigorous scholarship of a historian, Fehrman delivers a feast for history lovers, book lovers, and everybody curious about a behind-the-scenes look at our presidents.
