Recollections of Full Years PDF Download

Author: Helen Herron Taft
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philippines
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Author: Lewis L. Gould
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700618007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Few presidential couples enjoyed a closer relationship in the White House than Will and Nellie Taft. Throughout William Howard Taft's rise in American politics, she had been his most intimate confidant. When circumstances separated them, as when Helen Herron Taft became incapacitated by a stroke and was unable to accompany the president on his storied travels-or was herself on recuperative trips-she pressed him for letters, and he obliged with gossipy correspondence that provides a fascinating account of his presidency at decisive moments in his single term. These 113 letters, all but a few never before published, represent a rare glimpse into the mind of a chief executive speaking candidly about individuals and issues. In them, Taft commented on political issues he encountered and decisions he made-as well as his growing disillusion with Theodore Roosevelt, his unhappiness with Congress, and his struggles with his weight and golf score. Breathing new life into a bygone era in all of its complexity and humanity, they also open a new window on Washington early in the twentieth century-providing Taft's reactions not only to social figures of the Progressive Era but also to the impact of innovations like the automobile and rudimentary air conditioning. Sometimes indiscreet and frustrated with his political prospects, Taft comes through as a man who worked hard at a job for which he was not well suited. Indeed, Taft has been written off as a failed chief executive who was pushed into office by his wife; yet, as he insisted to Nellie, he was a creditable chief executive confronted with a changing political environment. Taft's letters may not warrant calling him a great president, but they reveal a more thoughtful occupant of the White House than scholars have acknowledged. Other than those that Harry Truman wrote to Bess, there is no comparable archive of modern presidential letters to a spouse that equals the letters to "Dearest Nellie" that Will Taft sent. Edited and introduced by a leading historian of the Progressive Era, Taft's letters not only reveal the inner workings of a presidency at decisive moments but also humanize a chief executive to whom history has been less than kind.

Author: Carl Sferrazza Anthony
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006186594X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 798

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On the morning of William Howard Taft's inauguration, Nellie Taft publicly expressed that theirs would be a joint presidency by shattering precedent and demanding that she ride alongside her husband down Pennsylvania Avenue, a tradition previously held for the outgoing president. In an era before Eleanor Roosevelt, this progressive First Lady was an advocate for higher education and partial suffrage for women, and initiated legislation to improve working conditions for federal employees. She smoked, drank, and gambled without regard to societal judgment, and she freely broke racial and class boundaries. Drawing from previously unpublished diaries, a lifetime of love letters between Will and Nellie, and detailed family correspondence and recollections, critically acclaimed presidential family historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony develops a riveting portrait of Nellie Taft as one of the strongest links in the series of women -- from Abigail Adams to Hillary Rodham Clinton -- often critically declared "copresidents."

Author: Lewis L. Gould
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700617310
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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In this fascinating study, Lewis L. Gould has brought a shadowy first lady into the light and restored her to a rightful place as a patron of music. Helen Herron Taft came to the White House intent on establishing Washington, D.C., as the nation's cultural capital. A stroke in May 1909 made her a semi-invalid, impaired her speech, and disrupted her agenda. Historians have written her off as a shrewish figure who pushed her portly husband into the presidency. Gould challenges this outdated narrative with new information on Helen Taft's campaign to bring the best of classical music to the White House during her four years. He draws on prodigious research about the musicians who performed there-including violinist Fritz Kreisler, pianist Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, and contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink, and reveals for the first time how Nellie Taft enlisted a diverse array of top-notch artists for her musicales, recitals, and social events. The result is a major contribution to a better understanding of the White House as a cultural center at the turn of the last century. Beyond her musical agenda, Helen Taft enhanced the appearance of Washington with the planting of the cherry trees from Japan that now bloom each spring. Gould also delves with insight into Mrs. Taft's role in the politics of her husband's administration. He provides the most complete recounting into her part in the dismissal of Henry White as ambassador to France, a key moment in the emergence of her husband's split with Theodore Roosevelt. He discusses the nature of her stroke, based on letters from her husband and her doctors, and reveals how Mrs. Taft, her daughter Helen, and the journalist Eleanor Egan crafted the first ever memoir of any first lady. Drawing on memoirs and manuscripts not used before, Gould re-creates memorable occasions at the Taft White House, when dramatist Ruth Draper delivered her monologues, Charles Coburn staged Shakespeare on the White House lawn, and Lady Augusta Gregory of the Irish Players dropped by. Gould's path-breaking study of Helen Taft is a significant addition to the literature on first ladies and a tribute to a complex and brave woman who overcame illness and adversity to leave her own special imprint on the history of the White House.

Author: N.C.B.L.A.
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0763646091
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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More than one hundred leading authors and illustrators donate their talents in a creative tour de force that is making history. Conceived and co-created by the National Children’s Book and Literary Alliance, this outstanding collection of essays, personal accounts, historical fiction, and poetry melds with an equally stunning array of original art to offer a look at America’s history through the prism of the White House. Starting with a 1792 call for designers and continuing through the present day, these highly engaging writings and illustrations, expressing varied viewpoints and interwoven with key historical events, are a vital resource for family and classroom sharing — and a stirring reminder that the story of the White House is the story of every American. Back matter includes source notes, notes on contributor, and an index.

Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451673795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 912

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Pulitzer Prize–winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s dynamic history of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. Winner of the Carnegie Medal. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history. The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure. Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men. The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history—an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.

Author: Jonathan Lurie
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611179882
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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A study of the Supreme Court tenure of the only US president to serve as chief justice provides a unique perspective on 1920s America. In this book, Jonathan Lurie offers a comprehensive examination of the Supreme Court tenure of the only person to have held the offices of president of the United States and chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. William Howard Taft joined the Court during the Jazz Age and the era of prohibition, a period of disillusion and retreat from the idealism reflected during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. Lurie considers how conservative trends at this time were reflected in key decisions of Taft’s court. Although Taft was considered an undistinguished chief executive, such a characterization cannot be applied to his tenure as chief justice. Lurie demonstrates that Taft’s leadership on this tribunal, matched by his productive relations with Congress, in effect created the modern Supreme Court. Furthermore he draws on the unpublished letters Taft wrote to his three children, Robert, Helen, and Charles, generally once a week. His missives contain an intriguing mixture of family news, insights concerning contemporaneous political issues, and occasional commentary on his fellow justices and cases under consideration. Lurie structures his study in parallel with the eight full terms in which Taft occupied the center seat, examining key decisions while avoiding legal jargon wherever possible. The high point of Taft’s chief justiceship was the period from 1921 to 1925. The second part of his tenure was marked by slow decline as his health worsened with each passing year. By 1930 he was forced to resign, and his death soon followed. In an epilogue Lurie explains why Taft is still regarded as an outstanding chief justice—if not a great jurist—and why this distinction is important. “Conflicts from the early twentieth century endure, and Lurie gives us old and new perspectives from which to understand a living Constitution.” —Journal of American History

Author: James Chace
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439188262
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Beginning with former president Theodore Roosevelt’s return in 1910 from his African safari, Chace brilliantly unfolds a dazzling political circus that featured four extraordinary candidates. When Roosevelt failed to defeat his chosen successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican nomination, he ran as a radical reformer on the Bull Moose ticket. Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson, the ex-president of Princeton, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the bosses who had made him New Jersey’s governor. Most revealing of the reformist spirit sweeping the land was the charismatic socialist Eugene Debs, who polled an unprecedented one million votes. Wilson’s “accidental” election had lasting impact on America and the world. The broken friendship between Taft and TR inflicted wounds on the Republican Party that have never healed, and the party passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness under Reagan and George W. Bush. Wilson’s victory imbued the Democratic Party with a progressive idealism later incarnated in FDR, Truman, and LBJ. 1912 changed America.

Author: Lewis L. Gould
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780700619023
Category : Presidents' spouses
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This biography of Theodore Roosevelt's wife presents a more complex and interesting figure than the somewhat secularized saint Edith Roosevelt has become in the literature on first ladies.

Author: William Howard Taft
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780379120806
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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