I’ve always been fascinated by power and how people use it. From the time I was tiny, I’ve loved reading about how people left their fingerprint on history, and boy, do presidents leave their mark. Given these interests, it’s unsurprising that I’ve been my career this far examining how early presidents crafted the executive branch. The president’s oversized role in American life is also at the heart of my podcast work (I cohost The Past, The Promise, The Presidency with the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Each season we explore a different element of the presidency and its relationship to history). In my future scholarship, I plan to continue this exploration long after George Washington left office. Stay tuned for more, and in the meantime enjoy these great reads!
After Eisenhower left office, he was routinely ranked in the bottom ten on the presidential rankings. Now, he’s regularly voted into the top five. This book helps explain why Eisenhower deserves to be at the top, why he left such an indelible mark on the nation, and why the second half of the 20th century was the age of Eisenhower. It’s also beautifully written and a joy to read.
A New York Times bestseller, this is the "outstanding" (The Atlantic), insightful, and authoritative account of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency.
Drawing on newly declassified documents and thousands of pages of unpublished material, The Age of Eisenhower tells the story of a masterful president guiding the nation through the great crises of the 1950s, from McCarthyism and the Korean War through civil rights turmoil and Cold War conflicts. This is a portrait of a skilled leader who, despite his conservative inclinations, found a middle path through the bitter partisanship of his era. At home, Eisenhower affirmed the central elements of the New…
I'm a history professor at the University of Mississippi and I've been a political junkie for a long time. I really began following politics during the 1988 presidential election and I vividly remember reading about the race in the newspaper every morning and then watching the evening news coverage each night. Thus, it seemed like the perfect topic for my second book. It was really fascinating to see the similarities and differences between my memories and the sources from the time.
Both major political parties formed much bigger ideological tents during most of the post-World War II period than they do today.
Kabaservice’s book is fascinating because it depicts a time and place in the 1960s when the Republican Party was extremely heterogenous and featured large and politically potent moderate and liberal wings. Geographically, the Party of Lincoln still held great sway in its original base in New England and the Midwest. As a result, centrists like New York’s Nelson Rockefeller, Michigan’s George Romney, and Massachusetts’ Ed Brooke were power brokers in the GOP of that era.
Kabaservice also shows how conservatives ascended to power as the liberal and moderate wings gradually declined and disappeared by the early 21st century, giving us the contemporary Republican Party.
As the 2012 elections approach, the Republican Party is rocketing rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threaten to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mount primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appear to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise are dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seems, has suddenly become a party of ideological purity.
Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of…
As a faculty member and program evaluator, I’ve spent over two decades exploring questions around cross-cultural dynamics, empowerment, and human flourishing. I care deeply about vulnerable people and the misuse of power, and I find joy in conducting research that can improve people’s lives. I recognize that my early work as a counselor brings a unique perspective to my work, as does my childhood, which was partially spent in the Peruvian rainforest.
David Brooks thinks deeply and writes thoughtfully. He challenges me through this book to be a better person and to live a more courageous, authentic life.
As I conducted interviews with scores of social entrepreneurs and development leaders for my book, several commented on the toxic hero culture that exists in this space.
People want to change the world for a variety of reasons–and some of these reasons have more to do with what success would do for them rather than for the people they are trying to serve. This book shines a light on this problem, and I appreciate David’s courage in writing what he did.
David Brooks challenges us to rebalance the scales between the focus on external success - “résumé virtues” - and our core principles.
Named one of the best books of the year by The Economist
With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous best sellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to…
I take great pride in having somehow turned a passion for visiting presidential libraries into an academic career. I’ve now conducted extensive research at eight of them, and have future projects lined up to get me to the rest. This experience means I can and frequently do ruin family gatherings by challenging distant relations to quizzes about obscure details involving presidential pets. But it has also left me well-placed to write a number of articles and books exploring how domestic politics shapes the development and execution of U.S. foreign policy. I’ve done this while affiliated with the University of Oxford and, more recently, at City, University of London.
If you want to go a little deeper, you can’t do much better than this outstanding study of how Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower sought to sustain public support for the Korean War.
Written by a historian who knows his sources like the back of his hands, this book is jam-packed with evidence of the ways in which presidents try to control the narrative about an ongoing war. And beyond its impressive use of archival materials, it also challenges the conventional wisdom about a president’s ability to lead public opinion using the “bully pulpit.”
Presidents can and do try to do that. But the Korean case illuminates the unique challenges of selling a limited war, in which the administration struggled to calibrate its mobilization campaign with the complex politics of waging war.
How presidents spark and sustain support for wars remains an enduring and significant problem. Korea was the first limited war the U.S. experienced in the contemporary period - the first recent war fought for something less than total victory. In Selling the Korean War, Steven Casey explores how President Truman and then Eisenhower tried to sell it to the American public.
Based on a massive array of primary sources, Casey subtly explores the government's selling activities from all angles. He looks at the halting and sometimes chaotic efforts of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles.…
I’m an author of YA fiction who spent his earlier years “wiggling dollies” (as the Brits say) in the trenches of Jim Henson’s Muppet world and then spent a decade writing children’s television of the PBS kind. After writing my first kids’ novel (Out of Patience), I never looked back. OK, I did glance back for the inspiration for a second novel…
In 1907, at the Carlisle Indian School (Carlisle, PA), a scrappy Native American football team coached by Pop Warner invented the passing game and revolutionized the game of football as it was being played by the Ivy League schools with deadly results. (So many players were dying from injuries, President Teddy Roosevelt almost banned the game in 1905.) Sally Jenkins’ book is eye-opening history that throws open the doors to the Carlisle Indian School and grippingly tells the story of how the “Carlisle Redmen,” as they were called, became the darling of the nation, and eventually took on Harvard in a legendary 1912 game pitting two young running backs against each other: Jim Thorpe and Dwight Eisenhower.
If you’re a football fan and/or have an interest in Native American history, this book entertains with Pop Warner’s famous trick plays (e.g., the “hidden ball trick”) and the Harvard boys performing the…
Sally Jenkins, bestselling co-author of It's Not About the Bike, revives a forgotten piece of history in The Real All Americans. In doing so, she has crafted a truly inspirational story about a Native American football team that is as much about football as Lance Armstrong's book was about a bike.
If you’d guess that Yale or Harvard ruled the college gridiron in 1911 and 1912, you’d be wrong. The most popular team belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans…
I’ve always been fascinated by power and how people use it; from the time I was tiny, I’ve loved reading about how people left their fingerprint on history. I now make my career as a presidential historian, and I’m committed to sharing this history with a broad public audience in books, opinion editorials, podcasts, and other media. In my experience, most people find history fascinating if they can learn about it in an interesting way. That’s my goal with all my work and the goal of the books I’ve recommended below!
The political parties can be a bit confusing as the names Republican and Democratic have been around for centuries, but hardly resemble the original parties at their formation. To Make Men Free is the best overview of the Grand Old Party, its many evolutions, and its important role in American history. It is also my favorite of the many books written by famed historian Heather Cox Richardson. To Make Men Freewould be a great gift for subscribers to Richardson’s newsletter, Letters from an American, or dads who are interested in politics.
When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet, despite the egalitarian dream at the heart of its founding, the Republican Party quickly became mired in a fundamental identity crisis. Would it be the party of democratic ideals? Or would it be the party of moneyed interests? In the century and a half since, Republicans have vacillated between these two poles, with dire economic, political, and moral repercussions for the entire nation.In To…
I read this book twice this year – once in print and then I knew my husband would enjoy it, so we listened together while traveling on audio. We were both in elementary school when Eisenhower was President and so the five presidents were all part of our generation.
I am not a history buff, and historical books are not my genre, but I found this so detailed and fascinating that I was excited to share it with others. The Vietnam War left a terrible legacy for LBJ, and this book changed my opinion of him. Agent Hill was able to give us an insight into the personalities and struggles of each man who held this office and his own personal struggles because of witnessing the Kennedy assassination.
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Kennedy and Me and Five Days in November reflects on his seventeen years in the Secret Service for presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. The assassination of one president, the resignation of another, and the swearing-in of the two who followed those traumatic events. Clint Hill was there, on duty, through Five Presidents. After an extraordinary career as a Special Agent on the White House Detail, Clint Hill retired in 1975. His career spanned the administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and…
I became a historian because I am nosy. I like to know what is going on in other people’s lives. I study politics because I am fascinated by power—who has it? How did they get it? I took up this project not knowing much about First Ladies or Pat Nixon. My quest to know more led to the correspondence between Pat and her closest friend. The letters in these files allowed me to hear Pat’s voice describe her life as a politician’s wife, as Second Lady, and as a regular citizen. I feel privileged to be able to share that with the world.
Although the sections directly discussing Pat are limited, I found this book very useful. Holt offers a view of another presidential marriage that was contemporaneous and interactive with the Nixons. Mamie was a role model for Pat and Holt was one for me. Holt provided me with a roadmap for dealing with sensitive issues within a marriage and a presidency.
It was fitting for a soldier's wife to make curtains out of military-surplus parachutes. That they would hang in the White House made little difference. Mamie Doud Eisenhower was a president's wife who seemed to most Americans like the friend next door. She gave us ""Mamie pink"" and ""Mamie bangs"" but has stood in the shadows of first ladies who followed. Yet she accomplished more than even her own contemporaries noticed, and her popularity not only enhanced her husband's presidency but also put a distinctive stamp on the role of first lady. This first scholarly biography of Mamie Eisenhower draws…
I began my career as a foreign correspondent in Cold War Eastern Europe, under communist domination. I lived in Greece, a Cold War battleground, in the 1980s, from where I made regular forays into the Balkans and Central Europe. Those journeys left a vivid, lifelong impression on me.
This is a deft, economical, and readable biography of Eisenhower's years in the White House, when the Cold War was at its most tense and dangerous, and how it wasn't inevitable that it would stay cold. Eisenhower, in fact, it could be argued, put his stamp on the style and tenor of the Cold War like no other U. S. president.
Newly discovered and declassified documents make for a surprising and revealing portrait of the president we thought we knew.
America’s thirty-fourth president was belittled by his critics as the babysitter-in-chief. This new look reveals how wrong they were. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed the atomic bomb and refused to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, "McCarthywasm." He stimulated the economy to lift it from recession, built an interstate highway system, turned an $8 billion deficit in 1953 into a $500 million surplus in 1960. (Ike was the last President until Bill Clinton…
I am an unextraordinary individual with an ordinary skill set including strengths and weaknesses. Yet, my life experiences have caused me to reach deep inside and find my own greatness to face seemingly impossible obstacles in my path. My writing reflects this hopeful overcoming and undaunted spirit. I have learned that heroes only exist because they must face daunting villains. Such villains can arise from other individuals, outside forces, life circumstances, and even from within ourselves. Yet, I have learned that villains are not a threat to destroy us, they are in fact the vehicles by which we become heroes in our own story. There are no heroes without villains.
This is my ultimate favorite true story about a group of completely unrelated, unprepared, and completely unextraordinary individuals molded into a group that would fight and die for each other.
I am captivated by the selflessness of these individuals and have worked to achieve the same in groups that I have had the honor of associating with. This individual and unit level catharsis rivals any story I have read in its power amidst incredible sorrow and trial.
Currahee! A Screaming Eagle at Normandy. Donald R. Burgett is a real Screaming Eagle, who jumped with that famed division at Normandy and survived to tell the tale. His memoir vividly portrays the tragic chaos of war: the blood and sweat, the glory and tears of one of the greatest battles of all time. Currahee! (this was the battle cry and motto of his regiment) begins with jump training and explodes in drama as they are parachuted into Normandy with orders to take and hold the high ground behind the beaches. It contains unforgettable incidents. The author's almost dispassionate tone…
