Author: Christopher J. Leahy Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 080717355X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 508
Book Description
Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation’s least effective heads of state. In President without a Party—the first full-scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades—Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States. Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler’s early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his vice-presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler’s ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later. Leahy also examines the president’s personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a “traitor president.” The most complete accounting of Tyler’s life and career, Leahy’s biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South’s dominant ideology of states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-of-the-road, bipartisan approach to the nation’s problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president—the annexation of Texas—exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.
Author: Christopher J. Leahy Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 0807173541 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 556
Book Description
Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation’s least effective heads of state. In President without a Party—the first full-scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades—Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States. Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler’s early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his vice-presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler’s ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later. Leahy also examines the president’s personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a “traitor president.” The most complete accounting of Tyler’s life and career, Leahy’s biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South’s dominant ideology of states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-of-the-road, bipartisan approach to the nation’s problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president—the annexation of Texas—exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.
Author: Gail Collins Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0805091181 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
William Henry Harrison died just 31 days after taking the oath of office in 1841. Today he is a curiosity in American history, but as Collins shows in this entertaining and revelatory biography, he and his career are worth a closer look.
Author: Edward L. Widmer Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0805069224 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
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.
Author: Scott Farris Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 0762784210 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 393
Book Description
Veteran political journalist Scott Farris tells the stories of legendary presidential also-rans, from Henry Clay to Stephen Douglas, from William Jennings Bryan to Thomas Dewey, and from Adlai Stevenson to Al Gore. He also includes concise profiles of every major candidate nominated for president who never reached the White House but who helped promote the success of American democracy. Farris explains how Barry Goldwater achieved the party realignment that had eluded FDR, how George McGovern paved the way for Barack Obama, and how Ross Perot changed the way all presidential candidates campaign. There is Al Smith, the first Catholic nominee for president; and Adlai Stevenson, the candidate of the "eggheads" who remains the beau ideal of a liberal statesman. And Farris explores the potential legacies of recent runners-up John Kerry and John McCain. The book also includes compact and evocative portraits of such men as John C. Fremont, the first Republican Party presidential candidate; and General Winfield Scott, whose loss helped guarantee the Union victory in the Civil War. This new edition of Almost President brings the work up-to-date with a section that explores the results and ramifications of the 2012 presidential election.
Author: David Priess Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 1541788214 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
A vivid political history of the schemes, plots, maneuvers, and conspiracies that have attempted -- successfully and not -- to remove unwanted presidents To limit executive power, the founding fathers created fixed presidential terms of four years, giving voters regular opportunities to remove their leaders. Even so, Americans have often resorted to more dramatic paths to disempower the chief executive. The American presidency has seen it all, from rejecting a sitting president's renomination bid and undermining their authority in office to the more drastic methods of impeachment, and, most brutal of all, assassination. How to Get Rid of a President showcases the political dark arts in action: a stew of election dramas, national tragedies, and presidential departures mixed with party intrigue, personal betrayal, and backroom shenanigans. This briskly paced, darkly humorous voyage proves that while the pomp and circumstance of presidential elections might draw more attention, the way that presidents are removed teaches us much more about our political order.
Author: Edward P. Crapol Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807882720 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
The first vice president to become president on the death of the incumbent, John Tyler (1790-1862) was derided by critics as "His Accidency." In this biography of the tenth president, Edward P. Crapol challenges depictions of Tyler as a die-hard advocate of states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Instead, he argues, Tyler manipulated the Constitution to increase the executive power of the presidency. Crapol also highlights Tyler's faith in America's national destiny and his belief that boundless territorial expansion would preserve the Union as a slaveholding republic. When Tyler sided with the Confederacy in 1861, he was branded as America's "traitor" president for having betrayed the republic he once led.
Author: Alec Baldwin Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 052552200X Category : Humor Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
Political satire as deeper truth: Donald Trump’s presidential memoir, as recorded by two world-renowned Trump scholars, and experts on greatness generally "I have the best words, beautiful words, as everybody has been talking and talking about for a long time. Also? The best sentences and, what do you call them, paragraphs. My previous books were great and sold extremely, unbelievably well--even the ones by dishonest, disgusting so-called journalists. But those writers didn't understand Trump, because quite frankly they were major losers. People say if you want it done right you have to do it yourself, even when 'it' is a 'memoir.' So every word of this book was written by me, using a special advanced word processing system during the many, many nights I've been forced to stay alone in the White House--only me, just me, trust me, nobody helped. And it's all 100% true, so true--people are already saying it may be the truest book ever published. Enjoy." Until Donald Trump publishes the ultimate account of his entire four or eight or one-and-a-half years in the White House, the definitive chronicle will be You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year As President. Trump was elected because he was the most frank presidential candidate in history, a man eager to tell the unvarnished truth about others’ flaws and tout his own amazing excellence. Now he levels his refreshingly compulsive, un-PC candor at his landslide election victory as well as his role as commander-in-chief and leader of the free world. There are intimate, powerful, mind-boggling revelations on every page. You are there with him during his private encounters with world leaders, a few of whom he does not insult. You are there at the genius Oval Office strategy sessions with his advisers. You are there in his White House bedroom as he crafts the pre-dawn Twitter pronouncements that rock the world. And, of course, you are there on the golf course as Trump attempts to manage the burdens of his office. President Trump explains each of the historic decisions that have already made America great again, and how he always triumphs over the fake news media. You'll learn what he really thinks of his cabinet members and top aides not related to him, of the First Lady and the First Daughter and the additional three or four Trump children. Included at no extra charge is a lavish and exclusive portfolio of spectacular, historic and intimate color photographs of President Trump in private – inside the White House, inside Mar-a-Lago, at Trump Tower, and more. You Can’t Spell America Without Me is presented by America’s foremost Trump scholar Kurt Andersen as well as America's foremost mediocre Trump impersonator, Alec Baldwin. You Can't Spell America Without Me is the perfect holiday gift!
Author: Bob Woodward Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1501116460 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
Bob Woodward exposes one of the final pieces of the Richard Nixon puzzle in his new book The Last of the President’s Men. Woodward reveals the untold story of Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who disclosed the secret White House taping system that changed history and led to Nixon’s resignation. In forty-six hours of interviews with Butterfield, supported by thousands of documents, many of them original and not in the presidential archives and libraries, Woodward has uncovered new dimensions of Nixon’s secrets, obsessions and deceptions. The Last of the President’s Men could not be more timely and relevant as voters question how much do we know about those who are now seeking the presidency in 2016—what really drives them, how do they really make decisions, who do they surround themselves with, and what are their true political and personal values?
Author: Scott S. Greenberger Publisher: Hachette+ORM ISBN: 030682390X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 440
Book Description
When President James Garfield was shot in 1881, nobody expected Vice President Chester A. Arthur to become a strong and effective president, a courageous anti-corruption reformer, and an early civil rights advocate. Despite his promising start as a young man, by his early fifties Chester A. Arthur was known as the crooked crony of New York machine boss Roscoe Conkling. For years Arthur had been perceived as unfit to govern, not only by critics and the vast majority of his fellow citizens but by his own conscience. As President James A. Garfield struggled for his life, Arthur knew better than his detractors that he failed to meet the high standard a president must uphold. And yet, from the moment President Arthur took office, he proved to be not just honest but brave, going up against the very forces that had controlled him for decades. He surprised everyone -- and gained many enemies -- when he swept house and took on corruption, civil rights for blacks, and issues of land for Native Americans. A mysterious young woman deserves much of the credit for Arthur's remarkable transformation. Julia Sand, a bedridden New Yorker, wrote Arthur nearly two dozen letters urging him to put country over party, to find "the spark of true nobility" that lay within him. At a time when women were barred from political life, Sand's letters inspired Arthur to transcend his checkered past--and changed the course of American history. This beautifully written biography tells the dramatic, untold story of a virtually forgotten American president. It is the tale of a machine politician and man-about-town in Gilded Age New York who stumbled into the highest office in the land, only to rediscover his better self when his nation needed him.
Author: Christopher J. Leahy
Author: Christopher J. Leahy
Author: Gail Collins
Author: Edward L. Widmer
Author: Scott Farris
Author: David Priess
Author: Edward P. Crapol
Author: Alec Baldwin
Author: Bob Woodward
Author: Scott S. Greenberger