100 books like The Improbable Wendell Willkie

Bill Donovan, recognized as a hero for rescuing his fellow soldiers at the front in World War I, was a rising star in the Republican Party, becoming assistant attorney general under Republican President Calvin Coolidge.

But in mid-1941, when many Republicans were condemning President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a warmonger, Donovan broke with them and supported FDR, urging him to create an intelligence agency to prepare the United States for a war against fascism.

In his insightful Wild Bill Donovan, Douglas Waller recounts Donovan’s bold decision to ally himself with FDR, rejecting partisan politics and instead prioritizing the defense of American democracy. FDR eventually named Donovan director of the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime spy agency that was a forerunner of today’s Central Intelligence Agency.

In the 1930s, Republicans across America heaped criticism on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, which they claimed would wither free enterprise and damage the economy. They labeled him a “socialist”—or worse.

Among the Republicans who broke with this broad Republican assault on FDR was John G. Winant, the Republican governor of New Hampshire. Winant gave up state politics to establish FDR’s Social Security program, and after the start of World War II Winant became FDR’s ambassador to London.

Winant’s courage, first in breaking with his party to join FDR, and then helping Winston Churchill and the British people fend off the Nazi assault, is part of Lynne Olson’s authoritative Citizens of London, the Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour.

Walter White served as the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1931 until his death in 1955. A light-skinned Black man often mistaken for white, he used his appearance to infiltrate the white-supremacy power structure and then work for civil rights.

In his evocative autobiography, A Man Called White, White recounts how in 1941 he and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph pushed President Franklin Roosevelt to take a major step forward in the struggle for civil rights – creating the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC). It’s a gripping tale about an often-overlooked part of the civil rights movement

The FEPC worked to desegregate the war industries, a mission that reshaped American politics and set the Democratic Party on the path of becoming the party of civil rights.

The Second War united Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in a close and historic relationship. The two Allied leaders spent over a hundred days together in the White House and at conferences held in several other countries, including Morocco, Iran, Canada, Egypt, and the Soviet Union.

Despite the impression that they were boon companions, what they really thought of each other is shrouded in mystery. The pair, however, jointly helped save Western democracy, as Meacham explains, with authority and grace.

Critchlow offers compelling portraits of four men (Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan) who sought to define the direction of the Republican Party during the 1960s, an era when the Democrats were firmly entrenched as the nation’s majority party.

This book reminds us of the role of contingency as we seek to explain the past. Critchlow stresses that although ideas are important, politics more often involves various figures responding pragmatically to shifting circumstances. The Republican Party of the 1960s was more ideologically diverse than it has been in recent decades.  

This book is interesting because it shows how a traditional New Deal/Great Society liberal like Vice President Mondale adapted to the changing politics of the 1970s and 1980s. 

To a certain extent, he saw how some Democratic policies needed to be reformed for the new circumstances of a more conservative era. During his 1984 run for the president, he famously proposed raising taxes to combat the Reagan-era deficits. 

Though this proposal is recalled as a misguided attempt to campaign as a conventional progressive, Mondale was trying to show that Democrats could be responsible fiscal stewards. Four years later, Dukakis continued this effort through his own repeated mentions of the multiple budgets he balanced while governor of Massachusetts.

George W. Bush, even today, 14 years after leaving the presidency, is a controversial president. But as with all presidents, to understand their politics and policies you have to first understand their personality and character. That’s what I like about this book: Bruni seeks to explain and understand who Bush was as a man—a man who, although the son of a president, never seemed destined to lead a nation and the world and yet ultimately faced one of the greatest crises in US history. Bruni, a former New York Times reporter who covered Bush as presidential nominee and president, shows W.’s weaknesses and strengths, his somewhat surprising life journey of serious endeavors for an often less-than-serious man, and ultimately how the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed Bush’s entire outlook and demeanor, thrusting him into an unprecedented challenge that elevated the laid-back good-time guy to a serious and dedicated leader.… show more.

Why would anybody in their right mind put themselves through the agonies of a presidential campaign? And what does it take to win? Cramer’s account of the crowded 1988 campaign is less about strategy and tactics than the personality and character of the candidates (including Joe Biden, Bob Dole, and George H. W. Bush). Ego and ambition, courage and cowardice are on display here, but so too is an almost across-the-board sense of honor and duty that’s in rare supply today.

I can still remember when Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to Congress. Unabashedly, “unbought and unbossed,” she also threw her hat in the ring in the race for president—the first woman to run. I dare anyone to read her biography and not be inspired.

Accusations of ballot fraud, election challenges, dueling slates of electors, threats of political violence—even a new civil war. It sounds eerily like the 2020 presidential election, but it happened in 1876. The legitimate winner that year was Democrat Samuel Tilden. His rival, Rutherford B. Hayes, who eventually ascended to the presidency, and Tilden both, according to Morris, went to bed on election night, believing Tilden was the winner. The fraud, this time, was initiated, not by the candidate himself, but by Republican operatives behind closed doors who worked to propel Hayes to the top, in exchange for an end to Reconstruction—which led inexorably to the Jim Crow era. 

The bitter battle left Tilden and the country with grievous losses. The country is still recovering.