Author: William Smith WhitePublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
Citadel
Author: William Smith WhiteSenator Allen Ellender of Louisiana
Author: Thomas A. BecnelPublisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807119785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
Allen J. Ellender, born in 1890 on a sugar plantation in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, rose to become one of the most dominant men in the U.S. Senate. This biography, based on prolonged examination of the voluminous Ellender Papers and extensive research in other primary and secondary sources, including interviews with people who knew Ellender during various stages of his lengthy career, makes an important contribution to our understanding of Louisiana and national politics during much of this century. Ellender began life in a farm family and never lost his close ties to rural Louisiana. Still, he sought a career as a lawyer and served as city attorney and district attorney before being elected to the Louisiana state legislature in 1924. Originally an opponent of Huey Long, Ellender converted to Longism after Huey was elected governor in 1928. But because he refused to condone questionable oil-leasing practices on state lands, he was bypassed as Long’s state political heir in the thirties. He was elected instead to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his death in 1972. In Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, Thomas A. Becnel methodically traces the extended career of this contradictory politician—a man who, though essentially a conservative, was surprisingly liberal on many issues. He supported progressive legislation in areas such as education, public housing, censorship, and the separation of church and state. He was also one of the first senators to criticize his colleague Joseph McCarthy. Yet throughout his career he remained a staunch advocate of racial segregation. During Ellender’s long tenure in the Senate, in which he served under Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the Korean conflict, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War, he was intimately involved in decisions and debates that have shaped the recent history of the country. Becnel astutely places Ellender in the context of the history of his time and the social, economic, and political milieu of his state. The result is a careful, balanced portrait of one of the most influential legislators of this century.
Master of the Senate
Author: Robert A. CaroPublisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0394528360
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1233
Book Description
Master of the Senate, Book Three of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, carries Johnson’s story through one of its most remarkable periods: his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done. It was during these years that all Johnson’s experience—from his Texas Hill Country boyhood to his passionate representation in Congress of his hardscrabble constituents to his tireless construction of a political machine—came to fruition. Caro introduces the story with a dramatic account of the Senate itself: how Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun had made it the center of governmental energy, the forum in which the great issues of the country were thrashed out. And how, by the time Johnson arrived, it had dwindled into a body that merely responded to executive initiatives, all but impervious to the forces of change. Caro anatomizes the genius for political strategy and tactics by which, in an institution that had made the seniority system all-powerful for a century and more, Johnson became Majority Leader after only a single term-the youngest and greatest Senate Leader in our history; how he manipulated the Senate’s hallowed rules and customs and the weaknesses and strengths of his colleagues to change the “unchangeable” Senate from a loose confederation of sovereign senators to a whirring legislative machine under his own iron-fisted control. Caro demonstrates how Johnson’s political genius enabled him to reconcile the unreconcilable: to retain the support of the southerners who controlled the Senate while earning the trust—or at least the cooperation—of the liberals, led by Paul Douglas and Hubert Humphrey, without whom he could not achieve his goal of winning the presidency. He shows the dark side of Johnson’s ambition: how he proved his loyalty to the great oil barons who had financed his rise to power by ruthlessly destroying the career of the New Dealer who was in charge of regulating them, Federal Power Commission Chairman Leland Olds. And we watch him achieve the impossible: convincing southerners that although he was firmly in their camp as the anointed successor to their leader, Richard Russell, it was essential that they allow him to make some progress toward civil rights. In a breathtaking tour de force, Caro details Johnson’s amazing triumph in maneuvering to passage the first civil rights legislation since 1875. Master of the Senate, told with an abundance of rich detail that could only have come from Caro’s peerless research, is both a galvanizing portrait of the man himself—the titan of Capital Hill, volcanic, mesmerizing—and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings and personal and legislative power.
Fulbright
Author: Randall Bennett WoodsPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521482622
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 734
Book Description
A full-scale biography, including the civil rights movement and the major international events of the Cold War.
The Senate and the League of Nations
Author: Henry Cabot LodgePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Book Description
The Last Great Senate
Author: Ira ShapiroPublisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1586489364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513
Book Description
Describes the statesmen who participated in the last glory days of the Senate, describing their leadership through the crisis years of the 1970s before the 1980 election signaled the start of a period of diminished effectiveness.
Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
Author: Al FrankenPublisher: Twelve
ISBN: 1455540439
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 523
Book Description
From Senator Al Franken - #1 bestselling author and beloved SNL alum -- comes the story of an award-winning comedian who decided to run for office and then discovered why award-winning comedians tend not to do that. "Flips the classic born-in-a-shack rise to political office tale on its head. I skipped meals to read this book - also unusual - because every page was funny. It made me deliriously happy." -- Louise Erdrich, The New York Times This is a book about an unlikely campaign that had an even more improbable ending: the closest outcome in history and an unprecedented eight-month recount saga, which is pretty funny in retrospect. It's a book about what happens when the nation's foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it. It's a book about our deeply polarized, frequently depressing, occasionally inspiring political culture, written from inside the belly of the beast. In this candid personal memoir, the honorable gentleman from Minnesota takes his army of loyal fans along with him from Saturday Night Live to the campaign trail, inside the halls of Congress, and behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic and/or hilarious moments of his new career in politics. Has Al Franken become a true Giant of the Senate? Franken asks readers to decide for themselves.
Desk 88
Author: Sherrod BrownPublisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374722021
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In Desk 88, he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him. "Perhaps the most imaginative book to emerge from the Senate since Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts produced Profiles in Courage." —David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Despite their flaws and frequent setbacks, each made a decisive contribution to the creation of a more just America. They range from Hugo Black, who helped to lift millions of American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho’s Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities. He also writes about Herbert Lehman of New York, Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin. Together, these eight portraits in political courage tell a story about the triumphs and failures of the Progressive idea over the past century: in the 1930s and 1960s, and more intermittently since, politicians and the public have successfully fought against entrenched special interests and advanced the cause of economic or racial fairness. Today, these advances are in peril as employers shed their responsibilities to employees and communities, and a U.S. president gives cover to bigotry. But the Progressive idea is not dead. Recalling his own career, Brown dramatizes the hard work and high ideals required to renew the social contract and create a new era in which Americans of all backgrounds can know the “Dignity of Work.”
The U.S. Senate
Author: Tom DaschlePublisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250027551
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
The second entry in the civics series clearly and concisely explains how the United States Senate works. The U.S. Senate is the second book in the Fundamentals of American Government civics series, exploring the inner workings of this important part of the legislative branch. As with Selecting a President, this book is written for all audiences, but voiced toward high school seniors and college freshmen—or any citizen interested in a concise yet authoritative exploration of this representative entity. Written by former Senator Tom Daschle, and co-written by acclaimed journalist Charles Robbins, this compelling and digestible book carefully examines and explains exactly how the Senate operates. From its electoral process to voting procedure, historic beginnings to modern day issues—there is no area of this governmental body left un-revealed. Told with an insider's perspective there is not a more defining or easily accessible compendium detailing the U.S. Senate.
Henry M. Jackson
Author: Robert G. KaufmanPublisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295802227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 559
Book Description
Henry M. Jackson ranks as one of the great legislators in American history. With a Congressional career spanning the tenure of nine Presidents, Jackson had an enormous impact on the most crucial foreign policy and defense issues of the Cold War era, as well as a marked impact on energy policy, civil rights, and other watershed issues in domestic politics. Jackson first arrived in Washington, D.C., in January 1941 as the Democratic representative of the Second District of Washington State, at the age of 28 the youngest member of Congress. “Scoop” Jackson won reelection time and again by wide margins, moving to the Senate in 1953 and serving there until his death in 1983. He became a powerful voice in U.S. foreign policy and a leading influence in major domestic legislation, especially concerning natural resources, energy, and the environment, working effectively with Senator Warren Magnuson to bring considerable federal investment to Washington State. A standard bearer for the New Deal-Fair Deal tradition of Roosevelt and Truman, Jackson advocated a strong role for the federal government in the economy, health care, and civil rights. He was a firm believer in public control of electric and nuclear power, and leveled stern criticism at the oil industry’s “obscene profits” during the energy crisis of the 1970s. He ran for the presidency twice, in 1972 and 1976, but was defeated for the nomination first by George McGovern and then by Jimmy Carter, marking the beginning of a split between dovish and hawkish liberal Democrats that would not be mended until the ascendance of Bill Clinton. Jackson’s vision concerning America’s Cold War objectives owed much to Harry Truman’s approach to world affairs but, ironically, found its best manifestation in the actions taken by the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan. An early and strong supporter of Israel and of Soviet dissidents, he strongly opposed the Nixon/Kissinger policy of detente as well as many of Carter’s methods of dealing with the Soviet Union. Robert Kaufman has immersed himself in the life and times of Jackson, poring over the more than 1,500 boxes of written materials and tapes that make up the Jackson Papers housed at the University of Washington, as well as the collections of every presidential library from Kennedy through Reagan. He interviewed many people who knew Jackson, both friends and rivals, and consulted other archival materials and published sources dealing with Jackson, relevant U.S. political history and commentary, arms negotiation documents, and congressional reports. He uses this wealth of material to present a thoughtful and encompassing picture of the ideas and policies that shaped America’s Cold War philosophy and actions.