Skip to search
Skip to main content
Catalog
Help
Feedback
Your Account
Library Account
Bookmarks
(
0
)
Search History
Search in
Keyword
Title (keyword)
Author (keyword)
Subject (keyword)
Title starts with
Subject (browse)
Author (browse)
Author (sorted by title)
Call number (browse)
search for
Search
Advanced Search
Bookmarks
(
0
)
Princeton University Library Catalog
Start over
Cite
Send
to
SMS
Email
EndNote
RefWorks
RIS
Printer
Bookmark
Presidential ambition : how the presidents gained power, kept power, and got things done / Richard Shenkman.
Author
Shenkman, Richard
[Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
1st ed.
Published/Created
New York : HarperCollins, ©1999.
Description
xxix, 361 pages ; 24 cm
Availability
Copies in the Library
Location
Call Number
Status
Location Service
Notes
ReCAP - Remote Storage
E176.1 .S56 1999
Browse related items
Request
Details
Subject(s)
Presidents
—
United States
—
History
[Browse]
Ambition
[Browse]
Executive power
—
United States
—
History
[Browse]
United States
—
Politics and government
[Browse]
Summary note
Combining a potent narrative with persuasive and compelling insights, Shenkman reveals that it is not just recent presidents who have been ambitious - and at times frighteningly overambitious, willing to sacrifice their health, family, loyalty, and values as they sought to overcome the obstacles to power - but that they all have. This volcanic ambition, Shenkman shows, has been essential not only in obtaining power but in facing - and attempting to master - the great historical forces that have continually reshaped the United States, from Manifest Destiny and Emancipation to immigration, the Great Depression, and nuclear weapons.
As Shenkman describes the lives and careers of the most representative and colorful presidents from Washington to Nixon, he shows that those who succeeded in reaching the White House, whatever their flaws, were complicated human beings, idealistic as well as ambitious. Over time, however, they began to make increasingly troubling compromises, leading to a decline in the moral tone of American politics.
What drove politics downward? In a stunning conclusion, Shenkman demonstrates that it wasn't a decline in presidential character that was responsible, but change - the dramatic transformation of the United States from a country of four million in Washington's day to more than a quarter billion today - that made running the country more complicated and difficult. Instead of things getting better and better they got worse and worse as people became used to increasingly promiscuous political practices.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references (p. 343-350) and index.
Contents
1. In the Garden of Eden
2. The Birth of the Two-Party System
3. The Revolution in the Suffrage
4. Manifest Destiny
5. The Story of Franklin Pierce
6. The Slavery Crisis
7. The Story of Abraham Lincoln
8. The Birth of Industrial Capitalism
9. The Birth of Machine Politics
10. The Story of Chester A. Arthur
11. The Arrival of the Immigrants
12. The Media
13. World Power: I
14. World Power: II
15. World Power: III
16. FDR: The Great Depression
17. FDR: World War II
18. The Cold War
Table of Presidents.
Show 16 more Contents items
ISBN
006018373X
9780060183738
LCCN
98027045
OCLC
39368328
Statement on language in description
Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage.
Read more...
Other views
Staff view
Ask a Question
Suggest a Correction
Report Harmful Language
Supplementary Information