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Author: Marc Karnis Landy
Publisher:
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 296
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Searching for common threads in these five presidencies, Landy and Milkis enable us to better understand both the possibilities and the limitations of the office."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Aaron David Miller
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-10-07
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 1137464461
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Presidency has always been an implausible—some might even say an impossible—job. Part of the problem is that the challenges of the presidency and the expectations Americans have for their presidents have skyrocketed, while the president's capacity and power to deliver on what ails the nations has diminished. Indeed, as citizens we continue to aspire and hope for greatness in our only nationally elected office. The problem of course is that the demand for great presidents has always exceeded the supply. As a result, Americans are adrift in a kind of Presidential Bermuda Triangle suspended between the great presidents we want and the ones we can no longer have. The End of Greatness explores the concept of greatness in the presidency and the ways in which it has become both essential and detrimental to America and the nation's politics. Miller argues that greatness in presidents is a much overrated virtue. Indeed, greatness is too rare to be relevant in our current politics, and driven as it is by nation-encumbering crisis, too dangerous to be desirable. Our preoccupation with greatness in the presidency consistently inflates our expectations, skews the debate over presidential performance, and drives presidents to misjudge their own times and capacity. And our focus on the individual misses the constraints of both the office and the times, distorting how Presidents actually lead. In wanting and expecting our leaders to be great, we have simply made it impossible for them to be good. The End of Greatness takes a journey through presidential history, helping us understand how greatness in the presidency was achieved, why it's gone, and how we can better come to appreciate the presidents we have, rather than being consumed with the ones we want.
Author: Pete Souza
Publisher: Triumph Books (IL)
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 170
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKImages of Greatness is a visual narrative on the presidency of Ronald Reagan as seen through the award-winning lens of his official White House photographer. This remarkable, compelling work sheds a never-before-seen light on perhaps the most dramatic and celebrated U.S. president. 1-57243-701-4$34.95 / Triumph Books
Author: David Von Drehle
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-10-30
Total Pages: 480
ISBN-13: 080507970X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Von Drehle has chosen a critical year ('the most eventful year in American history' and the year Lincoln rose to greatness), done his homework, and written a spirited account."N"Publishers Weekly."
Author: Max J. Skidmore
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2014-06-24
Total Pages: 420
ISBN-13: 0786481765
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPresidential rankings emerged in 1948 when Life Magazine published an article by the prominent historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., who had selected 55 experts on the presidency and asked them to rank the presidents. He asked his respondents to rank presidents into categories of "Great," "Near Great," "Average," "Below Average" and "Failure." The result was a substantial article that attracted wide public attention. His work and similar studies have not escaped criticism, however. Many general works on the presidency have discussed presidential greatness and identified presidents who stood out for good or ill. There are likely unavoidable inadequacies in all ranking schemes, regardless of the complicated measures that many authors employ in their attempts to be "scientific." This book provides useful criticism of these presidential rankings. It is arranged chronologically, and discusses each presidential performance and each ranking study in detail. Perhaps it would be sufficient to say that most who held the office were right for their time.
Author: Gary Hart
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2005-10-05
Total Pages: 204
ISBN-13: 1466823054
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe former senator and presidential candidate offers a provocative new assessment of the first "national security president" James Monroe is remembered today primarily for two things: for being the last of the "Virginia Dynasty"—following George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison—and for issuing the Monroe Doctrine, his statement of principles in 1823 that the western hemisphere was to be considered closed to European intervention. But Gary Hart sees Monroe as a president ahead of his time, whose priorities and accomplishments in establishing America's "national security" have a great deal in common with chief executives of our own time. Unlike his predecessors Jefferson and Madison, Monroe was at his core a military man. He joined the Continental Army at the age of seventeen and served with distinction in many pivotal battles. (He is prominently featured at Washington's side in the iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware.) And throughout his career as a senator, governor, ambassador, secretary of state, secretary of war, and president, he never lost sight of the fact that without secure borders and friendly relations with neighbors, the American people could never be truly safe in their independence. As president he embarked on an ambitious series of treaties, annexations, and military confrontations that would secure America's homeland against foreign attack for nearly two hundred years. Hart details the accomplishments and priorities of this forward-looking president, whose security concerns clearly echo those we face in our time. "A well-written, useful précis of Monroe’s life and career." - Kirkus Reviews
Author: David M. Abshire
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 236
ISBN-13: 9780742562455
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Call to Greatness examines how our next President can learn from the successes and failures of past Presidents to be an effective leader during a time of tremendous challenges at home and abroad.
Author: Joshua Wolf Shenk
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2006-10-02
Total Pages: 538
ISBN-13: 054752689X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA nuanced psychological portrait of Abraham Lincoln that finds his legendary political strengths rooted in his most personal struggles. Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln's adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the President’s character and his leadership. Mired in personal suffering as a young man, Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health. Shenk draws on seven years of research from historical record, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of Lincoln’s unhappiness. In the process, Shenk discovers that the President’s coping strategies—among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection—ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post Book World, Atlanta Journal-Constituion, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette As Featured on the History Channel documentary Lincoln “Fresh, fascinating, provocative.”—Sanford D. Horwitt, San Francisco Chronicle “Some extremely beautiful prose and fine political rhetoric and leaves one feeling close to Lincoln, a considerable accomplishment.”—Andrew Solomon, New York Magazine “A profoundly human and psychologically important examination of the melancholy that so pervaded Lincoln's life.”—Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., author of An Unquiet Mind
Author: Richard Striner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2010-09-16
Total Pages: 315
ISBN-13: 1442200669
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe debate is as old as the American Republic and as current as this morning's headlines. Should a president employ the powers of the federal government to advance our national development and increase the influence and power of the United States around the world? Under what circumstances? What sort of balance should the president achieve between competing visions and values on the path to change? Over the course of American history, why have some presidents succeeded brilliantly in applying their power and influence while others have failed miserably? In Lincoln's Way, historian Richard Striner tells the story of America's rise to global power and the presidential leaders who envisioned it and made it happen. From Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt within the Republican Party, the legacy was passed along to FDR—the Democratic Roosevelt—who bequeathed it to Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy. Six presidents—three from each party—helped America fulfill its great potential. Their leadership spanned the huge gulf that exists between our ideological cultures: they drew from both conservative and liberal ideas, thus consolidating powerful centrist governance. No creed of mere "government for government's sake," their program was judicious: it used government for national necessities. But it also brought inspiring results, thus refuting the age-old American ultra-libertarian notion that "the government that governs best, governs least." In a forceful narrative blending intellectual history and presidential biography, Striner presents the legacy in full. An important challenge to conventional wisdom, Lincoln's Way offers both an intriguing way of looking at the past and a much-needed lens through which to view the present. As a result, the book could change the way we think about the future.
Author: Obi Nwasokwa
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Published: 2016-03-23
Total Pages: 534
ISBN-13: 1514452693
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIt is the very stuff of legend. A man from the very bottom of the American caste emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, captures the nations imagination and improbably -- within four odd years, defies gravity and rises to the dizzying height of the American presidency thereby becoming the first non-white in history elected to lead an overwhelmingly white nation. A Cinderella like fairy tale? No. Thats the story of President Barack Obama. Seismic and epic, it is a biblical tale of the trials, travails, tribulations and dazzling triumphs of the rejected stone that became cornerstone of Moses as pharaoh. Reviled and vilified like his legendary idol, Abraham Lincoln, whose election sparked the American civil war, Obamas election likewise triggered a cold uncivil civil war. That notwithstanding, his achievements are impressive even historic. Regarded as a Gettysburg-like pivotal moment in American history, Obamas metaphorical conquest of the American presidency is a monumental achievement, a crossing of the Rubicon and a historic 1066-type turning point matched in its sheer historic weight and majesty only by the achievements of Washington and Lincoln. It reboots American democracy and heralds a new Yes We can! era of American and world history with new and expansive possibilities already evident in the unusual and iconoclastic demographic profiles of many of his wannabe successors. It gives credence to the creed All men are created equal and confers legitimacy on American democracy. It redounds to the credit of the nation, and burnishes her image as the pacesetter in the quest for interracial harmony. Citing these and Obamas many other achievements such as saving a moribund economy and reforming healthcare, the author predicts that Obama will be revered as one of Americas greatest presidents.
