For fear of an elective king

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Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith, the award-winning playwright and actor, has spent a lifetime listening--really listening--to the people around her. As a child in the segregated Baltimore of the early 1960s, Smith absorbed the words of her parents, teachers, neighbors--even train conductors--and realized that there was something more being communicated than the actual words:The conductor's voice had a mild kind of grandeur that was a cousin to the vocal tones I had heard at funerals--"Ashes-to-ashes"--and at christenings and weddings. These are words that have been said many times, but the person who speaks them understands that each time it must be said as if it matters, because it does matter. We never know what lies ahead, and we never know what just happened, and all words must house respect of those two unknowns.In Talk to Me, Smith looks back at a singular career as a seeker and interpreter of language in America, revealing the methodology behind her extraordinary search for the truth and nuances of verbal communication. For thirty years, the defining thesis of Smith's work has been that how we speak is just as important in communicating truth and identity as what we say. Everything from individual vocal tone to grammar, Smith demonstrates, can be as identifiable and revealing as a fingerprint. Her journey has taken her from the rarefied bastions of academia to riot-torn streets; she has conducted hundreds of interviews with subjects ranging from women prisoners to presidents of the United States. In 1995, her ongoing investigation led her to Washington, D.C. After all, what better place to wage an inquiry into the power of language and the language of power than in the city where "message" is a manufactured product? What happens when we as citizens accept--which we seem to be doing more and more--our chosen leaders' failure to tell the truth? And how can we know that we are hearing what Washington really has to say when everything we receive is filtered through the media? Armed with a blazing intellect and a tape recorder, Smith tackled these questions head-on, conducting more than four hundred interviews with people both inside and outside the power structure of Washington. She recorded these sessions in her trademark verbatim transcripts, which include every tic and verbal utterance of her subjects. More than thirty of these remarkable documents appear in this book, including interviews with Bill Clinton, Anita Hill, Studs Terkel, George Bush, Mike McCurry, and Helen Thomas. After five years of searing investigation into the world of the politicians, spin doctors, and power brokers who are steering the course of our country from inside the beltway, Smith has come away with a revelatory assessment--by turns devastating and hopeful--of the lexicon of power and politics in America. Talk to Me is a landmark contribution from a woman whose pioneering insights into language speak volumes.

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John Hohenberg

This is the story of how Bill Clinton fashioned the incredible, the unbelievable, the 100 to 1 shot victory in the campaign of 1992 that made him the forty-second President of the United States. In the beginning, it wasn't supposed to happen that way. With the Soviet Union in collapse at the end of the Cold War, the hero of the Persian Gulf War, President George Bush, was initially regarded by friend and foe alike as unbeatable. Except for a brief charge by Pat Buchanan, no one really challenged him in the Republican primaries for renomination. While among the contenders for the Democratic nomination, there were only five - none nationally known. Clinton was in the pack. But one by one, the strongest Democrats - Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, and Bob Kerrey - fell into obscurity. In the end, against all odds, Bill Clinton and running mate Al Gore emerged to reunite the divided party. The Clinton/Gore ticket went on to lead a growing entourage of twenty- and thirty-something campaigners. Noble ideals, high energy, and rock music made the Democratic party a powerhouse of youth and vitality. The Clinton message spoke to a generation of voters who statistically had been labeled apolitical and, along with more mature voters, moved them to embrace the possibility for change. "The Economy, Stupid" codified the single greatest concern of voters throughout the country, despite their parting views on other matters. The overconfident President Bush lambasted his youthful rival on every issue, from unfamiliarity with national government to assertions of weakness in leadership and flaws in character. And yet, even after Ross Perot split off a part of the Democratic vote as well as a section of Bush's support, the man from Hope, Arkansas, beat them both on Election Day - the third youngest after Theodore Roosevelt and John Kennedy to enter the White House. Employing the skills he has shown in his earlier books, a "crisp, narrative style...[and] discerning editorial mind" (The New York Times Book Review), John Hohenberg's Bill Clinton Story vividly captures not only one man's road to the White House but, more importantly, it illuminates the changing face of American politics on the eve of the twenty-first century.

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Richard Bradley

"Examining American politics, society, and culture from Kennedy to Nixon, this book ties all of these elements together and explains the political mythology that has made this period one of the most fascinating and important epochs in American history. One of the strengths of the book is that it not only demonstrates, but also explains, the deeper mechanisms behind our continual fascination with these three particular presidents. From the Kennedy assassination through Vietnam and Watergate, a complex web of historical events is untangled and lucidly explained. There have been few efforts to examine the nature of Kennedy's continual appeal, but no work thus far has attempted to place Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in one coherent framework that not only explains our fascination - indeed, obsession - with these individuals, but also illuminates the period in history they so dominated."--BOOK JACKET.

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Gil Troy

"The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Seismic shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the talented, charismatic, and flawed Baby Boomer president and his controversial, polarizing, but increasingly popular wife Hillary. Although it was in many ways a Democratic Gilded Age, the final decade of the twentieth century was also a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was over, America was safe, stable, free, and prosperous, and yet Americans felt more unmoored, anxious, and isolated than ever. Having lost the script telling us our place in the world, we were forced to seek new anchors. This was the era of glitz and grunge, when we simultaneously relished living in the Republic of Everything even as we feared it might degenerate into the Republic of Nothing. Bill Clinton dominated this era, a man of passion and of contradictions both revered and reviled, whose complex legacy has yet to be clearly defined.In this unique analysis, historian Gil Troy examines Clinton's presidency alongside the cultural changes that dominated the decade. By taking the '90s year-by-year, Troy shows how the culture of the day shaped the Clintons even as the Clintons shaped it. In so doing, he offers answers to two of the enduring questions about Clinton's legacy: how did such a talented politician leave Americans thinking he accomplished so little when he actually accomplished so much? And, to what extent was Clinton responsible for the catastrophes of the decade that followed his departure from office, specifically 9/11 and the collapse of the housing market? Even more relevant as we head toward the 2016 election, The Age of Clinton will appeal to readers on both sides of the aisle"--