POLS 3123 - American Presidency: Find Books

This second edition of Attack Politics updates Emmett Buell and Lee Sigelman's highly regarded study of negativity in presidential campaigns since 1960 with a substantial new chapter on the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Introduction -- How Adlai Stevenson put John F. Kennedy in the White House -- Presidential debates and "equal opportunity" -- "If you're thirty-two points behind, what else are you going to do?" -- The commission on presidential debates and its critics -- The dilemma : who debates? -- How to improve the presidential debates.

Robert Alexander convincingly argues that presidential electors--long considered by many as inconsequential, if not benign--are a serious danger to the health of our representative democracy. In one of the first systematic studies of its kind, Alexander presents a theory of elector behavior that explains why electors will continue to plague the system unless we institute reform. This book is indispensable for a deeper understanding of the presidential electoral process.

Wilentz, the eminent Princeton historian, argues that for the past thirty-five years U.S. political history has been defined by the new politics of conservatism brokered by its major powerhorse, Ronald Reagan. Following an analysis of Reagan's presidency, Wilentz concludes that Reagan not only transformed the stage of geopolitics, but also the American judiciary and government bureaucracy, while lifting the hearts of Americans who lived through Vietnam and Carter years. In his political persona, as well as his policies, Reagan embodied a new fusion of deeply right-leaning politics with some of the rhetoric and even the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. In American political history, there have been a few figures, most of them presidents, who for better or worse have placed their political stamp indelibly on their times. They include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt - and Ronald Reagan. A conservative hero in a conservative age, Reagan is either so admired by a minority of historians or so disliked by the others than it has seemed as if he and his administration have been difficult to evaluate with detachment. "The Age of Reagan" raises profound questions and opens passionate debate about the recent past in US politics.

An analysis of the events, ideas, and conflicts that have defined the Obama administration's foreign policy explores the struggles to enact coherent and effective policies at a time of global turmoil.

In volume four of this multi-part biography, the author, a Pulitzer Prize winner, follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career, describing Johnson's volatile relationship with John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy during the fight they waged for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president, through Johnson's unhappy vice presidency, his assumption to the presidency after Kennedy's assassination, his victories over the budget and civil rights, and the eroding trap of Vietnam. Previous volumes include: v. 1. The Path to Power (c1982), v. 2. Means of Ascent (c1990), v. 3. Master of the Senate (c2002).

This book is about U.S. policy makers who have wielded enormous influence, largely behind the scenes, since the end of World War II. The advent of the Cold War brought new problems of national security for the United States. As a result, U.S. presidents no longer sat down with their secretaries of state to determine the nation's foreign policy. Instead, postwar chief executives reached out to individuals in the intelligence and military organizations and, increasingly, to advisers in the White House. The Policy Makers examines seven such advisers—from public servants in the state department to CIA directors and U.S. senators—and the policies each adviser influenced. By focusing on individuals whose policy making role was often unknown to the public, Anna Kasten Nelson and her contributors shed light on the myriad ways in which the postwar foreign policy of the United States has been shaped, sometimes in ways very damaging to the nation's security.

Examines presidential power within the context of U.S. history and the ongoing relationships presidents and ex-presidents formed with one another. The inside story of the world's most exclusive fraternity; how presidents from Hoover through Obama worked with--and sometimes, against--each other when they were in and out of power.