"Describes how President Eisenhower used surrogates to orchestrate a secret campaign against the powerful Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy best known for his anti-Communist witch hunt, that ultimately resulted in McCarthy being censured and discredited"--NoveList.
Ulysses S. Grant is commonly remembered as a general of fierce determination and strategic vision -- the military leader who turned the tide of the Civil War and led the Union armies to victory, and who showed magnanimity and vision at Appomattox. His presidency is another matter. Here, the most common word used to characterize it is "scandal." Grant is routinely portrayed as a man out of his depth in the world of politics, whose eight years in office were without useful achievement and whose trusting nature and hands-off management style opened the federal coffers to plunder. But this assessment, Josiah Bunting III argues, is both caricature and cliche. Grant came to Washington in March 1869 to lead a country still bitterly divided by the legacy of the Civil War. Andrew Johnson, his predecessor, had been impeached and almost driven from office, and radical Republicans in Congress had imposed harsh conditions on the states of the former Confederacy. Grant committed himself to reunite and reforge the Union, and to resurrect and strengthen Abraham Lincoln's greatest legacy: full citizenship for the former slaves and their posterity. In these missions he succeeded. - Jacket.
"This is a comprehensive narrative account of the life of Gerald Ford written by one of his closest advisers, James Cannon. Written with unique insight and benefiting from personal interviews with President Ford in his last years, Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life is James Cannon's final look at the simple and honest man from the Midwest."--Publisher's website.
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.
"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.
Ike and McCarthy by David A. Nichols | Literally Just Books
