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Title: The Modern American Presidency by Lewis L. Gould, Richard Norton Smith ISBN: 0-7006-1252-1 Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas Pub. Date: May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent overview of Presidency from McKinley to GW Bush
Comment: This book is both erudite and accessible, and it's an excellent survey of the modern Presidency, which Gould, a respected University of Texas historian, points out has been transformed in roughly the past hundred years from an intimate, folksy, at times nearly one-man operation into an unwieldy, unworkable, and dangerously out-of-touch apparatus that has far less to do with running the country than it does with raising cash, making meaningless appearances and feeding the media, and getting re-elected to a Constitutionally-allowed (and historically-mandated) second term that in most cases is a failure compared with the first term. (Can you think of a President since Franklin Roosevelt whose second term was more successful than the first?)
Other reviewers of this book have pointed out that Gould's position on the evolution of the presidency is a paradox, since in order to be effective, the modern president must be a master of the perpetual campaign, and yet the perpetual campaign is what Gould believes is the bane of the presidency, transforming it into a position of celebrity and spectacle rather than one of leadership and policy. However, that is a paradox that needs to be examined more deeply in a philosophical context; this book is a survey, not a political science text, and Gould gets points for raising the paradox, which is a provocative one, in the first place.
The book is full of anecdotes and lucid detail about the modern presidents, along with Gould's snappy and precise evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of each, and the factors in the broader political culture of each man's term in office that changed the presidency forever. He is not particularly partisan in his political stance; he has good and bad to say about each president. There are many surprises in this short but rewarding book, and there are excellent suggestions for further reading at the back.
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Title: An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek ISBN: 0316172383 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image by David Greenberg ISBN: 0393048969 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 06 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Grand Old Party : A History of the Republicans by LEWIS GOULD ISBN: 0375507418 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes by Jonathan Rosenberg, Zachary Karabell ISBN: 0393051226 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 22 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Working Poor : Invisible in America by DAVID K. SHIPLER ISBN: 0375408908 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 03 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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