Relates the career of this colorful, courageous and controversial politicians who battled against political bosses, organized crime and big business in the best populist tradition.

Relates the career of this colorful, courageous and controversial politicians who battled against political bosses, organized crime and big business in the best populist tradition.

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2009 In the 1950s and early 1960s, Estes Kefauver was everywhere in politics and government. He ran for president twice, was the 1956 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, pioneered the use of television in Congressional hearings, and dug deep into many policy areas in the US Senate. Most students of politics or government have seen Kefauver's name, but there is surprisingly little comprehensive treatment of him as an individual and not as a part of a broader campaign, Senate history, or legislation. Charles Fortenay spent years trying to correct this vacancy in political biography. Fortenay's effort began during Kefauver's life, but took twenty-five years to get published and not in the form Fontenay had originally imagined. But the product is a good one. Fontenay takes us from Kefauver's childhood in Tennessee, to his law career, to his service in the US House, to his campaign for the Senate, his pursuit of the presidency in the 1950s, and his legislative battles up to his early death in 1963. In doing so, Fortenay shows us the many paradoxes of Kefauver. Kefauver was a hard working, not particularly charismatic legislator. But he was also a great retail politician, embarrassing Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson in multiple primaries throughout the 1950s. He was a something of a liberal, but he also looked down at women and was a swing vote on civil rights (To be fair, as a southern senator being a swing vote in civil rights is better than most of his colleagues). Kefauver maintained a close family life despite his active political career, but cheated on his wife fairly openly. Kefauver was ethical and principled (except when it came to monogamy), refusing to cut political deals to win the presidential nomination or keep gifts, but he had a constellation of wealthy friends who paid his personal expenses and bought stock based on the findings of a Congressional investigation. Any politician, really any person, studied so closely shows some wrinkles. Kefauver is no different. But overall, Kefauver was a hard worker, progressive particularly for his state, and helped democratize the nominating process. In those respects, he is a model for modern senators. A few nitpicks about the book. First, Fontenay writes that a Congressman Reece died and was replaced by his wife by appointment. Reece's wife won a special election because there are no appointments to fill House vacancies. Second, Fontenay short changes some of Kefauver's policy battles, including presidential succession which is of particular interest to me. That aside, Fontenay writes a great book. His sources are varied from many personal interviews, to Kefauver's letters, to the biographies of other senators. He manages to balance the many names and personalities and does a particularly good job of explaining the political convention intrigue of the 1950s. I highly recommend this book to students of politics, government, and history. It fills a void in the literature with the tale of a significant senator of the mid-20th century.

Best remembered as the father of Vice President Al Gore, Albert Gore, Sr., worked tirelessly in politics himself, a Democratic congressman and senator from 1939 to 1971 and a representative of southern liberalism and American reformism. In the first comprehensive biography of Gore, Kyle Longley has produced an incisive portrait of a significant American political leader and an arresting narrative of the shaping of a southern and American political tradition. His research includes archival sources from across the country as well as interviews with Gore’s colleagues, friends, and family. Longley describes how the native of Possum Hollow, Tennessee, became known during his political career as a maverick, a man who, according to one journalist, would “rock almost anybody’s boat.” For his actions, Gore often paid a heavy price, personally and professionally. Overshadowed by others in Congress such as Lyndon Johnson, J. William Fulbright, Richard Russell, and Barry Goldwater, Gore nonetheless played a major role on the important issues of taxes, the Interstate Highway system, civil rights, nuclear power and arms control, and the Vietnam War. Longley situates Gore as part of a generation of politicians who matured on the messages of William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. In the South, Gore belonged to a staunch group of liberals who battled traditional conservative forces, often within their own party. He and others such as Estes Kefauver, Frank Porter Graham, and Ralph Yarborough set the stage for subsequent generations, including that of Jimmy Carter and Jim Sasser, and later Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jr., and John Edwards. From his career shines one encapsulating moment in 1952: squared off on the floor of the Senate against Strom Thurmond, who wanted Gore to sign the “Southern Manifesto” declaring southern resistance to desegregation, Gore responded simply, classically, “Hell no.”

Stressing the relevance of The Transformation of Southern Politics as a background for understanding the South into the next century, Jack Bass and Walter De Vries write that the "themes of change in southern politics still involve the rise of the Republican Party, black political development and the Democratic response to it--and the interaction of these forces with social and economic issues." The Transformation of Southern Politics examines the post-World War II political evolution of the eleven southern states and traces the effects of such influences as Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, urban migration, the growth of the Republican Party, and the rise of African Americans in the political landscape. Relying on the methodology that V. O. Key used in his 1949 classic Southern Politics in State and Nation, the work draws on interviews with more than 360 politicians, scholars, journalists, and labor leaders, and includes a wealth of data on voting trends, political perceptions, and population flow to present a comprehensive portrait of the region up to the 1976 presidential election. In the preface to the Brown Thrasher edition, Bass and De Vries offer an overview of the region's current political climate, including an analysis of the 1994 mid-term elections. They also provide excerpts from their interview with Bill Clinton during his first campaign for political office.

Why did Al Gore, after angry opposition to the Vietnam War, submit to the draft? What happened in Vietnam that made him sullen and bitter? After renouncing politics, what set him back on the track mapped out for him? What made him claim (falsely) that he invented the Internet? How closely is he allied with the tobacco industry? What is the real nature of his partnership with Bill Clinton? How was it altered by the Lewinsky affair? INVENTING AL GORE addresses these issues and more as it unveils the true motivations, ideals, and idiosyncracies of one of Washington's most inscrutable men. Bill Turque, who covered both of Gore's vice presidential campaigns and the Clinton White House, draws on extensive access to Gore's key advisers, friends, and family. He unmasks a man who in private can sing and dance to George Strait's music but in public measures every comment and gesture with legendary caution. As Turque details, Gore's great political albatross -- a lack of empathy -- was hatched during his lonely childhood as the product of ambitious political parents who groomed him for the presidency. Turque's keen analysis also uncovers the genesis of Gore's questionable fund-raising and of a political platform laden with worthy but emotionally safe planks such as bioethics, global warming, and the Internet. In addition, Inventing Al Gore illuminates how personal tragedies have shaped his political life and the remarkable influence that women, from his mother to Naomi Wolf, have had on his career. INVENTING AL GORE reveals Gore to be one of the most intelligent, idealistic men in Washington, yet one who is repeatedly prone to prevarication, exaggeration, and avoidance of hard issues. Turque offers a meticulously researched narrative filled with colorful, insightful details that sharpen the debate over whether Gore can outgrow his limitations and excel in the office he has prepared for all his life.

Although the distinction between the politics of the left and the right is commonly assumed in the media and in treatments of political science and history, the terms are used so loosely that the student and the general reader are often confused: What exactly are the terms left and right supposed to imply? This two-volume Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right contains over 450 articles on individuals, movements, political parties, and ideological principles, with those usually thought of as left in the left-hand volume (Volume 1), and those considered on the right in the right-hand volume (Volume 2). Key Themes Countries/Regions "Isms" Laws Political Issues Political Movements Political Parties People

In 1950, the essentials of two distinct interpretations of organized crime existed side by side in the United States. One was essentially socioeconomic, one conspiratorial. The Kefauver Crime Committee of 1950-1951 was to play a vital role in orienting both professional and popular opinion toward a conspiracy interpretation. In doing so, the Committee ignored the nascent but promising body of sociological literature, and it dismissed out of hand the economic and legal arguments for regulation. In years to come, its widely heralded reports provided the essential material for college textbooks and journalistic accounts and became a model for the McClellan investigation and other official studies. This effort was intended as a study of the Committee and not of crime.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZE Book Four of Robert A. Caro’s monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as “one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece.” The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career—1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin’s bullet to reach its mark. By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest Senate Leader in our history. But the 1960 nomination would go to the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Caro gives us an unparalleled account of the machinations behind both the nomination and Kennedy’s decision to offer Johnson the vice presidency, revealing the extent of Robert Kennedy’s efforts to force Johnson off the ticket. With the consummate skill of a master storyteller, he exposes the savage animosity between Johnson and Kennedy’s younger brother, portraying one of America’s great political feuds. Yet Robert Kennedy’s overt contempt for Johnson was only part of the burden of humiliation and isolation he bore as Vice President. With a singular understanding of Johnson’s heart and mind, Caro describes what it was like for this mighty politician to find himself altogether powerless in a world in which power is the crucial commodity. For the first time, in Caro’s breathtakingly vivid narrative, we see the Kennedy assassination through Lyndon Johnson’s eyes. We watch Johnson step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain predecessor; a Congress determined to retain its power over the executive branch; and a nation in shock and mourning. We see how within weeks—grasping the reins of the presidency with supreme mastery—he propels through Congress essential legislation that at the time of Kennedy’s death seemed hopelessly logjammed and seizes on a dormant Kennedy program to create the revolutionary War on Poverty. Caro makes clear how the political genius with which Johnson had ruled the Senate now enabled him to make the presidency wholly his own. This was without doubt Johnson’s finest hour, before his aspirations and accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam. In its exploration of this pivotal period in Johnson’s life—and in the life of the nation—The Passage of Power is not only the story of how he surmounted unprecedented obstacles in order to fulfill the highest purpose of the presidency but is, as well, a revelation of both the pragmatic potential in the presidency and what can be accomplished when the chief executive has the vision and determination to move beyond the pragmatic and initiate programs designed to transform a nation. It is an epic story told with a depth of detail possible only through the peerless research that forms the foundation of Robert Caro’s work, confirming Nicholas von Hoffman’s verdict that “Caro has changed the art of political biography.”

In chronicling the life and career of Albert Gore, Sr., historian Anthony J. Badger seeks not just to explore the successes and failures of an important political figure who spent more than three decades in the national eye—and whose son would become Vice President of the United States—but also to explain the dramatic changes in the South that led to national political realignment. Born on a small farm in the hills of Tennessee, Gore served in Congress from 1938 to 1970, first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate. During that time, the United States became a global superpower and the South a two party desegregated region. Gore, whom Badger describes as a policy-oriented liberal, saw the federal government as the answer to the South's problems. He held a resilient faith, according to Badger, in the federal government to regulate wages and prices in World War II, to further social welfare through the New Deal and the Great Society, and to promote economic growth and transform the infrastructure of the South. Gore worked to make Tennessee the "atomic capital" of the nation and to protect the Tennessee Valley Authority, while at the same time cosponsoring legislation to create the national highway system. He was more cautious in his approach to civil rights; though bolder than his moderate Southern peers, he struggled to adjust to the shifting political ground of the 1960s. His career was defined by his relationship with Lyndon Johnson, whose Vietnam policies Gore bitterly opposed. The injection of Christian perspectives into the state's politics ultimately distanced Gore's worldview from that of his constituents. Altogether, Gore's political rise and fall, Badger argues, illuminates the significance of race, religion, and class in the creation of the modern South.