Author: William Gibbs McAdooPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584
Book Description
Crowded Years
Author: William Gibbs McAdooPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584
Book Description
Progressives at War
Author: Douglas B. CraigPublisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421408155
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
Craig's study of McAdoo and Baker illuminates the aspirations and struggles of two prominent southern Democrats. In this dual biography, Douglas B. Craig examines the careers of two prominent American public figures, Newton Diehl Baker and William Gibbs McAdoo, whose lives spanned the era between the Civil War and World War II. Both Baker and McAdoo migrated from the South to northern industrial cities and took up professions that had nothing to do with staple-crop agriculture. Both eventually became cabinet officers in the presidential administration of another southerner with personal memories of defeat and Reconstruction: Woodrow Wilson. A Georgian who practiced law and led railroad tunnel construction efforts in New York City, McAdoo served as treasury secretary at a time when Congress passed an income tax, established the Federal Reserve System, and funded the American and Allied war efforts in World War I. Born in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, Baker won election as mayor of Cleveland in the early twentieth century and then, as Wilson's secretary of war, supervised the dramatic build-up of the U.S. military when the country entered the Great War in Europe. This is the first full biography of McAdoo and the first since 1961 of Baker. Craig points out similarities and differences in their backgrounds, political activities, professional careers, and family lives. Craig's approach in Progressives at War illuminates the shared struggles, lofty ambitions, and sometimes conflicted interactions of these figures. Their experiences and perspectives on public and private affairs (as insiders who nonetheless were, in some sense, outsiders) make their lives, work, and thought especially interesting. Baker and McAdoo, in league with Wilson, offer Craig the opportunity to deliver a fresh and insightful study of the period, its major issues, and some of its leading figures.
When Washington Shut Down Wall Street
Author: William L. SilberPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691138761
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
When Washington Shut Down Wall Street unfolds like a mystery story. It traces Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo's triumph over a monetary crisis at the outbreak of World War I that threatened the United States with financial disaster. The biggest gold outflow in a generation imperiled America's ability to repay its debts abroad. Fear that the United States would abandon the gold standard sent the dollar plummeting on world markets. Without a central bank in the summer of 1914, the United States resembled a headless financial giant. William McAdoo stepped in with courageous action, we read in Silber's gripping account. He shut the New York Stock Exchange for more than four months to prevent Europeans from selling their American securities and demanding gold in return. He smothered the country with emergency currency to prevent a replay of the bank runs that swept America in 1907. And he launched the United States as a world monetary power by honoring America's commitment to the gold standard. His actions provide a blueprint for crisis control that merits attention today. McAdoo's recipe emphasizes an exit strategy that allows policymakers to throttle a crisis while minimizing collateral damage. When Washington Shut Down Wall Street recreates the drama of America's battle for financial credibility. McAdoo's accomplishments place him alongside Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan as great American financial leaders. McAdoo, in fact, nursed the Federal Reserve into existence as the 1914 crisis waned and served as the first chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson
Author: Kendrick A. ClementsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Describes the goals and accomplishments of the Wilson administration, and portrays his strangths as a leader. Bibliog.
Rails Under the Mighty Hudson
Author: Brian J. CudahyPublisher:
ISBN: 9780823221899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 106
Book Description
Rails Under the Mighty Hudson tells a story that begins in the final years of the nineteenth century and reaches fulfillment in the first decade of the twentieth: namely, the building of rail tunnels under the Hudson River linking New Jersey and New York. These tunnels remain in service today-although one is temporarily out of service since its Manhattan terminal was under the World Trade Center-and are the only rail crossings of the Hudson in the metropolitan area. Two of the tunnels were built by the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, a company headed by William Gibbs McAdoo, a man who later served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and even mounted a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination at one point. McAdoo's H&M remains in service today as the PATH System of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The other tunnel was opened in 1910 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, led to the magnificent Penn Station on Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street, and remains in daily service today for both Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. The author has updated this new edition with additional photographs, a concluding chapter on recent developments, and a Preface that recounts the last trains of September to the World Trade Center Terminal.
The Story of Silver
Author: William L. SilberPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691208697
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
"This is the story of silver's transformation from soft money during the nineteenth century to hard asset today, and how manipulations of the white metal by American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s and by the richest man in the world, Texas oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt, during the 1970s altered the course of American and world history. FDR pumped up the price of silver to help jump start the U.S. economy during the Great Depression, but this move weakened China, which was then on the silver standard, and facilitated Japan's rise to power before World War II. Bunker Hunt went on a silver-buying spree during the 1970s to protect himself against inflation and triggered a financial crisis that left him bankrupt. Silver has been the preferred shelter against government defaults, political instability, and inflation for most people in the world because it is cheaper than gold. The white metal has been the place to hide when conventional investments sour, but it has also seduced sophisticated investors throughout the ages like a siren. This book explains how powerful figures, up to and including Warren Buffett, have come under silver's thrall, and how its history guides economic and political decisions in the twenty-first century"--Publisher's description
The Wilson Circle
Author: Charles E. NeuPublisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442981
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"This book is a study of Woodrow Wilson's political leadership, consisting of ten vivid biographical sketches of those who were members of his inner group of advisers"--
A Woman Named Defiance
Author: Mary Faith FloydPublisher:
ISBN: 9780980055351
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
"Nearly 150 years ago, a woman named Mary Faith Floyd wrote a story that spans Savannah, GA, New York, Blount County, TN--and the area of town in Clinton, TN, known as Eagle Bend. It was published in serial form in a newspaper, and then ... Lost. Until now. Mary Faith Floyd's writing style is lavish "but very readable." The writing brings to mind novels by Anthony Trollope and even Thomas Hardy in its description of the natural world and human interactions." - Crystal Huskey, the Clinton Courier-News, May, 2019 It's not just any story, and she was not just any woman-and yes, her middle name was Defiance. Floyd, a twice-married woman, was writing in Milledgeville, GA and Knoxville, TN--using her maiden name--about equal pay for women in 1873, and about child abuse in 1885. Her daughter, Laura McAdoo Gagey became a noted Parisian solonierre who helped Anatole France write The Gods Will Have Blood, while her son, William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. became U.S. Treasury Secretary and ran for president in 1920 and 1924. Her husband, William Gibbs McAdoo, was a professor at the University of Tennessee. Storyhaus Media's Douglas McDaniel searched for Floyd's lost novel for 14 years before finding it on microfilm at the University of Georgia Library in Athens in January, 2019. It was last published as a serial in the Savannah Morning News in 1883. A Woman Named Defiance is an anthology of some of Mary Faith Floyd's poetry, essays, short stories, and her second book, Eagle Bend, a fiction novel that celebrates the raw nobility of 19th century life in southern Appalachia, the culture and norms of Savannah society, and the hopes and aspirations of Floyd's protagonist, Minona Dearing, a young woman seeking to become a published author in Savannah, New York, and Boston just after the Reconstruction period.
Mountain Rebels
Author: W. Todd GrocePublisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781572330931
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
"Groce offers a gracefully written, impressively researched narrative account of the experience of East Tennessee Confederates during the Civil War era. His analysis raises provocative questions about the socioeconomic foundations of Civil War sympathies in the Mountain South."--Robert Tracy McKenzie, University of Washington "Scholars of Appalachia's Civil War have long awaited Todd Groce's study of East Tennessee secessionists. I am pleased to report that this ground-breaking study of Southern Mountain Confederates was worth the wait."--Kenneth Noe, State University of West Georgia A bastion of Union support during the Civil War, East Tennessee was also home to Confederate sympathizers who took up the Southern cause until the bitter end. Yet historians have viewed these mountain rebels as scarcely different from other Confederates or as an aberration in the region's Unionism. Often they are simply ignored. W. Todd Groce corrects this distorted view of East Tennessee's antebellum development and wartime struggle. He paints a clearer picture of the region's Confederates than has previously been available, examining why they chose secession over union and revealing why they have become so invisible to us today. Drawing extensively on primary sources--newspapers, diaries, government reports--Groce allows the voices of these mountain rebels finally to be heard. Groce explains the economic forces and the family and political ties to the Deep South that motivated the East Tennessee Confederates reluctantly to join the fight for Southern independence. Caught in a war they neither sought nor started, they were trapped between an unfriendly administration in Richmond and a hostile Union majority in their midst. When the fighting was over and they returned home to face their vengeful Unionist neighbors, many were forced to flee, contributing to the postwar economic decline of the region. Placing the story in a broad context, Groce provides an overview of the region's economy and explains the social origins of secessionist sympathies. He also presents a collective profile of one hundred high-ranking Confederate officers from East Tennessee to show how they were representative of the rising commercial and financial leadership in the region. Mountain Rebels intertwines economic, political, military, and social history to present a poignant tale of defeat, suffering, and banishment. By piecing together this previously untold story, it fills a void in Southern history, Civil War history, and Appalachian studies. The Author: W. Todd Groce is executive director of the Georgia Historical Society.
Woman's World/Woman's Empire
Author: Ian TyrrellPublisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469620804
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Frances Willard founded the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1884 to carry the message of women's emancipation throughout the world. Based in the United States, the WCTU rapidly became an international organization, with affiliates in forty-two countries. Ian Tyrrell tells the extraordinary story of how a handful of women sought to change the mores of the world -- not only by abolishing alcohol but also by promoting peace and attacking prostitution, poverty, and male control of democratic political structures. In describing the work of Mary Leavitt, Jessie Ackermann, and other temperance crusaders on the international scene, Tyrrell identifies the tensions generated by conflict between the WCTU's universalist agenda and its own version of an ideologically and religiously based form of cultural imperialism. The union embraced an international and occasionally ecumenical vision that included a critique of Western materialism and imperialism. But, at the same time, its mission inevitably promoted Anglo-American cultural practices and Protestant evangelical beliefs deemed morally superior by the WCTU. Tyrrell also considers, from a comparative perspective, the peculiar links between feminism, social reform, and evangelical religion in Anglo-American culture that made it so difficult for the WCTU to export its vision of a woman-centered mission to other cultures. Even in other Western states, forging links between feminism and religiously based temperance reform was made virtually impossible by religious, class, and cultural barriers. Thus, the WCTU ultimately failed in its efforts to achieve a sober and pure world, although its members significantly shaped the values of those countries in which it excercised strong influence. As and urgently needed history of the first largescale worldwide women's organization and non-denominational evangelical institution, Woman's World / Woman's Empire will be a valuable resource to scholars in the fields of women's studies, religion, history, and alcohol and temperance studies.