Who’s to Say What’s Obscene

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Roger A. Fischer

In late nineteenth-century America, political cartoonists Thomas Nast, Joseph Keppler, Bernhard Gillam and Grant Hamilton enjoyed a stature as political powerbrokers barely imaginable in today's world of instant information and electronic reality. Their drawings in Harper's Weekly, the dime humor magazines Puck and the Judge, and elsewhere were often in their own right major political events. In a world of bare-knuckles partisan journalism, such power often corrupted, and creative genius was rarely restrained by ethics. Interpretations gave way to sheer invention, transforming public servants into ogres more by physiognomy than by fact. Blacks, Indians, the Irish, Jews, Mormons, and Roman Catholics were reduced to a few stereotypical characteristics that would make a modern-day bigot blush. In this pungent climate, and with well over 100 cartoons as living proof, Roger Fischer - in a series of lively episodes - weaves the cartoon genre in to the larger fabric of politics and thought the Guilded Age, and beyond.

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Eugene D. Genovese

In recent years American conservatism has found a new voice, a new way of picking up the political pieces left in the wake of liberal policies. But what seems innovative, Eugene Genovese shows us, may in fact have very old roots. Tracing a certain strain of conservatism to its sources in a rich southern tradition, his book introduces a revealing perspective on the politics of our day. As much a work of political and moral philosophy as one of history, The Southern Tradition is based on the intellectual journey of one of the most influential historians of the late twentieth century. To appreciate the tradition of southern conservatism, Genovese tells us, we must first understand the relation of southern thought to politics. Toward this end, he presents a historical overview that identifies the tenets, sensibilities, and attitudes of the southern-conservative world view. With these conditions in mind, he considers such political and constitutional issues as state rights, concurrent majority, and the nature and locus of political power in a constitutional republic. Of special interest are the southern-conservative critiques of equality and democracy, and of the Leviathan state in its liberal, socialist, and fascist forms. Genovese examines these critiques in light of the specific concept of property that has been central to southern social and political thought. . Not only does this book illuminate a political tradition grounded in the writings of John Randolph and John C. Calhoun, but it shows how this lineage has been augmented by powerful literary figures such as Allen Tate, Lewis Simpson, and Robert Penn Warren. Genovese here reconstitutes the historical canon, reenvisions the strengths and weaknesses of the conservative tradition, and broadens the spectrum of political debate for our time.

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Elizabeth Frost

America's 39 presidents have not all been great men, but they have all had great--sometimes greatly amusing and sometimes greatly surprising--things to say on myriad subjects. From Washington to Reagon, American presidents have sounded off with wit, eloquence, humor, solemnity, spitefulness and brilliance on everything from foreign policy to the personalities of their fellow presidents. The Bully Pulpit collects the cream of these presidential quotes and offers nearly 3,000 of them in a single, splendid volume.

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Pol Dzhonson

Acclaimed historian Paul Johnson shows how Churchill's immense adaptability combined with his natural pugnacity to make him a formidable leader for the better part of a century. Rich with anecdote and quotation, Johnson's narrative illustrates the British statesman's humor, resilience, courage, and eccentricity as no other biography before.