Political History

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  Proud Kentuckian: John C. Breckinridge, 1821-1875

  In his brief life John C. Breckinridge embraced the roles of lawyer, politician, statesman, soldier, exile, and businessman. An imposing and tactful man, he was exceptional for evoking both loyal devotion from his followers and generous respect from his opponents during a strife-torn era.

  Breckinridge's meteoric rise to national prominence began with election to the Kentucky legislature in 1849 and to the United States Congress in 1851. His eloquence earned him the Democratic Party's nomination for the vice presidency in 1856, and he became the youngest man ever to hold that office. Nearing the end of his term Breckinridge was ...Read More

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  Albert Shaw of the Review of Reviews

  The life of Albert Shaw (1857-1947) reflected in microcosm the changes that American society was undergoing through a critical period. This first full-length study focuses on two themes: Shaw’s career as editor and publisher of the Review of Reviews, an influential monthly journal in the early years of the twentieth century, and Shaw’s career as a public figure.

  Shaw was a member of the Progressive movement from its inception, but his concern and interests were wide-ranging, centering to a large degree on the question of what the industrialization of America meant. Lloyd J. Graybar shows incisively the ways in which ...Read More

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  American Business and Foreign Policy: 1920–1933

  With increasing world economic interdependence and a new position as a creditor nation, the American business community became more actively and vocally concerned with foreign policy after World War I than ever before. This book details the response of American businessmen to such foreign policy issues as the tariff, disarmament, allied debts, loans, and the Manchurian crisis.

  Far from presenting a monolithic front, the business community fragmented into nationalist and internationalist camps, according to this study. Division over each issue varied with the size, type, and geographic region of the various business interests, and despite their formidable economic power, business ...Read More

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  The Wayward Liberal: A Political Biography of Donald Richberg

  In the first political biography of Donald Richberg, Thomas E. Vadney traces the continuities and discontinuities in the American reform tradition from the days of the Progressives to the years after the New Deal. Richberg’s strong advocacy of the earlier liberalism contrasted with his equally strong rejection of post-New Deal liberalism.

  At the beginning of the New Deal, Richberg supported Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration program, but as time went on he was unable to accept the growth of big government and the welfare state that later evolved from it. Many of the old liberals firmly believed in the viability of ...Read More

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  An American Dissenter: The Life of Algie Martin Simons 1870–1950

  In this biography of Algie Martin Simons, a major figure in the Socialist party of America, Kent and Gretchen Kreuter show the widely ranging social activities that brought Simons into touch with many of the movements and personalities of his time. As a propagandist and historian, Simons wrote the first thoroughgoing Marxist account of American history. As a journalist, he furnished Upton Sinclair with much of the material that he used in The Jungle, and as a party politician, Simons was a significant force in unifying the party, in establishing the International Workers of the World (IWW), and in trying ...Read More

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  Republicans and Labor: 1919–1929

  At no other time in American history had labor unrest been more evident than the period immediately after World War I. Robert H. Zeiger here recounts the labor problems that faced the Republican administrations of Presidents Harding and Coolidge—massive strikes, antiracial hysteria, and the hardening of class attitudes throughout the nation— and describes the programs and policies of Republican leaders—particularly those of Herbert Hoover—to solve them. Zeiger finds that while suspicion and animosity between the Republicans and the union leaders persisted, the rising prosperity of the nation, together with the adroit efforts of Hoover and his associates, tended to lessen ...Read More