Go to A-Z Databases: Books & eBooks to search for more eBooks. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.
Want more on finding books or eBooks? Try our How to Use Books & eBooks guides.
41: Inside the Presidency of George H. W. Bush
Although it lasted only a single term, the presidency of George H. W. Bush was an unusually eventful one, encompassing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf War, and contentious confirmation hearings over Clarence Thomas and John Tower. Bush has said that to understand the history of his presidency, while "the documentary record is vital," interviews with members of his administration "add the human side that those papers can never capture." This book draws on interviews with senior White House and Cabinet officials conducted under the auspices of the Bush Oral History Project (a cooperative effort of the University of Virginia's Miller Center and the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation) to provide a multidimensional portrait of the first President Bush and his administration. Typically, interviews explored officials' memories of their service with President Bush and their careers prior to joining the administration. Interviewees also offered political and leadership lessons they had gleaned as eyewitnesses to and shapers of history. The contributors to 41--all seasoned observers of American politics, foreign policy, and government institutions--examine how George H. W. Bush organized and staffed his administration, operated on the international stage, followed his own brand of Republican conservatism, handled legislative affairs, and made judicial appointments. A scrupulously objective analysis of oral history, primary documents, and previous studies, 41 deepens the historical record of the forty-first president and offers fresh insights into the rise of the "new world order" and its challenges.
Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency
From best-selling, award-winning biographer Nigel Hamilton, this is an insightful, prodigiously researched, and wonderfully readable account of Bill Clinton’s first term in office. It shows how a well-meaning but naïve new president failed to assert true leadership in his first two years, and then illustrates how, in an astonishing act of self-reinvention, the president turned defeat into victory. Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency is a gripping tale of hubris and redemption--and a chronicle of one of the most dramatic reversals of fortune in modern American politics.
Exit With Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan
Few presidents have sparked as much interest in recent years as Ronald Reagan, already the subject of a large number of biographies and specialized subjects. This biography, based on recent research into the Reagan archives and synthesis of the large memoir literature, explores the shaping of his values and beliefs during his childhood in the American heartland, his leadership of the American conservative movement, and his successful political career culminating in the first two-term presidency since Dwight Eisenhower. Pemberton finds Reagan's personal career and ability to understand and communicate with the American people admirable, but finds many of the long-term effects of his presidency harmful.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: The War Years, 1939-1945
Having guided the nation through the worst economic crisis in its history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt by 1939 was turning his attention to a world on the brink of war. The second part of Roger Daniels's biography focuses on FDR's growing mastery in foreign affairs. Relying on FDR's own words to the American people and eyewitness accounts of the man and his accomplishments, Daniels reveals a chief executive orchestrating an immense wartime effort. Roosevelt had effective command of military and diplomatic information and unprecedented power over strategic military and diplomatic affairs. He simultaneously created an arsenal of democracy that armed the Allies while inventing the United Nations intended to ensure a lasting postwar peace. FDR achieved these aims while expanding general prosperity, limiting inflation, and continuing liberal reform despite an increasingly conservative and often hostile Congress. Although fate robbed him of the chance to see the victory he had never doubted, events in 1944 assured him that the victory he had done so much to bring about would not be long delayed. A compelling reconsideration of Roosevelt the president and campaigner, The War Years, 1939-1945 provides new views and vivid insights about a towering figure--and six years that changed the world.
John F. Kennedy
The youngest man to become president, John F. Kennedy is best known for his charming and lively personality and for his assassination.A natural politician, he won election after election, rising quickly through the ranks of Congress until finally being elected president.While in office, Kennedy fought for civil rights, established the Peace Corps, and succeeded in signing a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union.Despite events such as the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the construction of the Berlin Wall, what is most often remembered about Kennedy's short presidency is the tragic way in which it ended, and the many conspiracies surrounding his assassination.
Perspectives on the Legacy of George W. Bush
Opinions of the Presidency of George W. Bush and his perceived legacy seem to exist only at the extremes. From the contentious outcome of the 2000 election, to the attacks on September 11, to the ongoing War in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the efforts to transform major domestic policies, and culminating with the financial crisis of 2008, it is little wonder that the name George W. Bush tends not to evoke lukewarm opinion. During his time in office, Bush obtained the highest approval ratings of any sitting president, but also the lowest. Scholars and other observers of the Bush Presidency have been similarly divided. Across the board, the presidency of George W. Bush raises questions that invite challenges to political scientists, scholarly questions of significant general interest. The authors in this volume begin the process of addressing some of these questions, with essays that cover an array of issues related to his presidency, and the legacy it leaves. This collection of essays presented at the Mount Union College Symposium on the Legacy of George W. Bush, seeks to provide some balance, offering some initial assessments of the consequences of this controversial president and his eventful tenure in office.
Prophet from Plains: Jimmy Carter and His Legacy
Prophet from Plains covers Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jimmy Carter's major achievements and setbacks in light of what has been at once his greatest asset and flaw: his stubborn, faith-driven integrity. Carter's remarkable postpresidency is still in the making; however, he has already redefined the role for all who follow him.Frye Gaillard, who wrote extensively about Carter at the Charlotte Observer, was among the first to take seriously the Carter postpresidency and to challenge many accepted conclusions about his term in office. Carter was not an irresolute president, says Gaillard, but rather one so certain of his own rectitude that he misjudged the importance of ""selling"" himself to America. Ranging across the highs and lows of the Carter presidency, Gaillard covers the energy crisis, the Iran hostage situation, the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal and other treaties, and the new diplomatic emphasis on human rights. Carter stuck with his established priorities once out of office but was far more effective outside the strictures of presidential politics. Gaillard's coverage of this period includes Carter's friendship with Gerald R. Ford, his work through the Carter Center on disease control and election monitoring, and his association with Habitat for Humanity.""Prophet from Plains"" locates Carter in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets who took uncompromising stands for peace and justice. Resisting the role of an above-the-fray elder statesman, Carter has thrust himself into international controversies in ways that some find meddlesome and others heroic.
Republican Vision of John Tyler
Historians have generally ranked John Tyler as one of the least successful chief executives, despite achievements such as the WebsterAshburton treaty, which heralded improved relations with Great Britain, and the annexation of Texas. Why did Tyler pursue what appears to have been a politically selfdestructive course with regard to both his first party, the Democrats, and his later political alliance, the Whigs? Monroe has set out to explain the beliefs that led to Tyler=s resigning his Senate seat and exercising politically suicidal presidential vetoes as well as examines the crises Tyler faced during his term in the House: the Panic of 1819, the financially tottering national bank, and the Missouri debate.
Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War
In Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, accomplished foreign relations historian David F. Shmitz provides students of US history and the Vietnam era with an up-to-date analysis of Nixon's Vietnam policy in a brief and accessible book that addresses the main controversies of the Nixon years. President Richard Nixon's first presidential term oversaw the definitive crucible of the Vietnam War. Nixon came into office seeking the kind of decisive victory that had eluded President Johnson, and went about expanding the war, overtly and covertly, in order to uphold a policy of "containment," protect America's credibility, and defy the left's antiwar movement at home. Tactically, politically, Nixon's moves made sense. However, by 1971 the president was forced to significantly de-escalate the American presence and seek a negotiated end to the war, which is now accepted as an American defeat, and a resounding failure of American foreign relations. Schmitz addresses the main controversies of Nixon's Vietnam strategy, and in so doing manages to trace back the ways in which this most calculating and perceptive politician wound up resigning from office a fraud and failure. Finally, the book seeks to place the impact of Nixon's policies and decisions in the larger context of post-World War II American society, and analyzes the full costs of the Vietnam War that the nation feels to this day.
The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer--a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literarylife of our most literary president. In The Road to Monticello, Kevin J. Hayes fills this important gap by offering a lively account of Jefferson's spiritual and intellectual development, focusing on the books and ideas that exerted the most profound influence on him. Moving chronologically through Jefferson's life, Hayes revealsthe full range and depth of Jefferson's literary passions, from the popular "small books" sold by traveling chapmen, such as The History of Tom Thumb, which enthralled him as a child; to his lifelong love of Aesop's Fables and Robinson Crusoe; his engagement with Horace, Ovid, Virgil and otherwriters of classical antiquity; and his deep affinity with the melancholy verse of Ossian, the legendary third-century Gaelic warrior-poet. Drawing on Jefferson's letters, journals, and commonplace books, Hayes offers a wealth of new scholarship on the print culture of colonial America, reveals anintimate portrait of Jefferson's activities beyond the political chamber, and reconstructs the president's investigations in such different fields of knowledge as law, history, philosophy and natural science. Most importantly, Hayes uncovers the ideas and exchanges which informed the thinking ofAmerica's first great intellectual and shows how his lifelong pursuit of knowledge culminated in the formation of a public offering, the "academic village" which became UVA, and his more private retreat at Monticello. Gracefully written and painstakingly researched, The Road to Monticello provides an invaluable look at Jefferson's intellectual and literary life, uncovering the roots of some of the most important-and influential-ideas that have informed American history.
The War Worth Fighting: Abraham Lincoln's Presidency and Civil War America
"Were the results of the Civil War worth its huge cost in lives and resources? The prominent historians in this thought-provoking volume lay a firm groundwork for answering the question in the affirmative."--James M. McPherson, author of Abraham Lincoln "These perceptive essays remind modern Americans why Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War occupy a central place in our broader national history."--Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Union War "Adds substantially to our understanding of Lincoln as commander, educator, manager, and model for Americans of his day and ours."--John David Smith, author of Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops "Offers interpretations that may well challenge the conventional wisdom of many readers--a healthy exercise in understanding that our examination of even a well-traveled road can still be eye-opening."--John M. Belohlavek, author of Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing & the Shattering of the Union This volume of original essays, featuring an all-star lineup of Civil War and Lincoln scholars, provides the most current interpretations of the period and the man thrust into its center. Perhaps no one who ever pledged to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and defend the Constitution faced such fundamental challenges. The contributors to this volume examine how Lincoln actively and consciously managed the war--diplomatically, militarily, and in the realm of what we might now call public relations--and in doing so, reshaped and redefined the fundamental role of the president.