Bush won the White House, he was the first incumbent Republican governor elected president since William McKinley in 1896.William McKinley was the last of the Civil War veterans to reach the White House. Known widely as the Major, in honor of his military rank, he rose through Congress to head the crucial Ways and Means Committee where, in the early 1890s, he passed a strong and popular tariff bill.That success caught the eye of Marcus Hanna, a Cleveland industrialist with a passion for politics and an ambition to help make and elect a president. Democrats complained that McKinley was a mere puppet of the wealth Hanna, but historians generally believe they were a well-matched team of two strong-willed men. With Hanna’s help, McKinley was elected governor of Ohio in 1892.In 1896 McKinley swept away all rivals to win the presidential nomination on the first ballot. Faced in the general election by the well-respected and highly touted orator William Jennings Bryan, Republicans adopted their “Front Porch Campaign.” Thousands of citizens from across the country were brought to McKinley’s home in Canton for a handshake and a few words. Hanna arranged for this $3.5 million campaign to be paid for by big business, with oil baron John D. Rockefeller writing the largest check. McKinley’s factors in his campaign. He became the first presidential candidate in a generation to win a majority of the popular vote.McKinley was a popular president. Pushed reluctantly into the Spanish-American War, McKinley was instrumental in starting America on the path to becoming a global power. He was reelected by a landslide in 1901, after delivering a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he was assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, McKinley’s vice president, Theodore Roosevelt became the nation’s 26th president.H. Wayne Morgan’s extensively revised and expanded edition of McKinley and His America will prove to be a welcome resource to historians and scholars.

    senator, secretary of state, president of the United States (1825-1829), and, finally, U.S. representative (the only ex-president to serve in the House). On the basis of a thorough study of Adams' seventy-year diary among a host of other documents, the author gives us a richer account than we have yet had of JQAs life - his passionate marriage to Louisa Johnson, his personal tragedies (two sons lost to alcoholism), his brilliant diplomacy, his recurring depression, his exasperating behavior - and shows us why in the end, only Abraham Lincoln's death evoked a greater outpouring of national sorrow in nineteenth-century America. We come to see how much Adams disliked politics and hoped for more from life than high office; how he sought distinction in literary and scientific endeavors, and drew his greatest pleasure from being a poet, critic, translator, essayist, botanist, and professor of oratory at Harvard; how tension between the public and private Adams vexed his life; and how his frustrations kept him masked and aloof (and unpopular).

    Michael Beschloss, in The Los Angeles Times, said that it succeeds brilliantly. The New York Times called it rock solid and The Washington Post hailed it as invaluable. And SidneyBlumenthal in The Boston Globe wrote that it was dense with astonishing incidents.Now Dallek has condensed his two-volume masterpiece into what is surely the finest one-volume biography of Johnson available. Based on years of research in over 450 manuscript collections and oral histories, as well as numerous personal interviews, this biography follows Johnson, the human dynamo, from the Texas hill country to the White House. We see LBJ, in the House and the Senate, whirl his way through sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, talking, urging, demanding, reaching for influence and power, in an uncommonly successful congressional career. Then, in the White House, we see Johnson asthe visionary leader who worked his will on Congress like no president before or since, enacting a range of crucial legislation, from Medicare and environmental protection to the most significant advances in civil rights for black Americans ever achieved. And we see the depth of Johnson's privateanguish as he became increasingly ensnared in Vietnam.In these pages Johnson emerges as a man of towering intensity and anguished insecurity, of grandiose ambition and grave self-doubt, a man who was brilliant, crude, intimidating, compassionate, overbearing, driven: A tornado in pants. Gracefully written and delicately balanced, this

    Roosevelt twenty-nine years earlier had the American people known so little about a man who had stepped forward from obscurity to take the oath of office as President of the United States.” —from Chapter 4This is a comprehensive narrative account of the life of Gerald Ford written by one of his closest advisers, James Cannon. Written with unique insight and benefiting from personal interviews with President Ford in his last years, Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life is James Cannon’s final look at the simple and honest man from the Midwest.

    Based upon extensive use of the Van Buren papers and other basic primary sources of the period, this is a readable, authoritative biography of the 8th President of the United States and a close political ally of Andrew Jackson, and later upholder of the Jacksonian tradition.

    Hayes? Was he a great or inconsequential president? How did his early life and career shape his later years? How did his triumphs and failures alter our history? And why should we care? Ari Hoogenboom's masterful life of Hayes definitively answers those questions and shows why our nineteenth president deserves far greater recognition than he's received in the past.The first biography of Hayes in nearly fifty years, Hoogenboom's book recreates the rapidly changing world of Victorian America as experienced by one of its most reflective and perceptive figures. The Hayes that emerges is a much more progressive and far-sighted leader than previously suggested. He was, Hoogenboom argues, neither a Southern sympathizer nor an exemplar of the "Greedy Gilded Age." Rather, he was a devout, pragmatic champion of equal rights.Hayes's colorful life was rooted in his frontier experiences in Ohio and galvanized on Civil War battlefields, where he survived five wounds and was ultimately promoted to major general. No other president was under fire on the front lines as much as Hayes. Hayes's image as president (1877-1881), however, has not been quite so shining. He has been blamed for Reconstruction's failure and damned for an apparent bargain that guaranteed his election in exchange for withdrawing military support of Republican governments in the South. He has also been criticized for championing the gold standard, for breaking the Great Strike of 1877, for inconsistent support of civil-service reform, and for being an ineffectual politician.Hoogenboom contends that these evaluations are largely false. Previous scholars, he says, have failed to appreciate Hayes's limited options and have misrepresented his actions in their depictions of an overly cautious, nonvisionary president. In fact, he was strikingly modern in his efforts to enlarge the power of the office, which he used as his own bully pulpit to rouse public support for his goals. Chief among these goals, Hoogenboom shows, was equality for all Americans. Throughout his presidency and long afterwards, Hayes worked steadfastly for reforms that would encourage economic opportunity, distribute wealth more equitably, diminish the conflict between capital and labor, and ultimately enable African-Americans to achieve political equality. Although he fell far short of his ideals, his unwavering commitment deserves our attention and respect.

    This gap has now been filled with Dr. Rayback's authoritative work on Millard Fillmore. It is no eulogy, rather it is honest and unprejudiced, describing and assaying his defects of judgment such as his leadership of two abused parties at the beginning and at the end of his political career, but asserting that all this -- even his approval of the fugitive slave law -- was far outweighed by his moral convictions and concrete actions against the institution of human slavery. To Western New Yorkers this book will of course have special appeal, but it is by no means unduly concerned with local history; it is the story of a life not only of dignity and integrity but of permanent achievement on both the local and national scene. The Buffalo Historical Society takes pride in this presentation of its first president.

    Volume covers Pierce to the night of his inauguration.

    Outside the Oval Office, with a commitment rarely seen in an ex-president, he was more determined than ever to complete his life's mission: the achievement of world peace.With unique access to the Carter archives and to the man himself, award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley brings us this unprecedented biography of the former President. Here are penetrating observations of Carter's complex relationships with such world figures as Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, and Yasir Arafat, as well as his associations with the presidents who have succeeded him. Brinkley also reassesses the achievements of Carter's underrated White House tenure -- the Camp David accords, Panama Canal treaties, and his championing of human rights. The Unfinished Presidency is the definitive portrait of this formidable world statesman.

    Remini's prizewinning, three-volume biography, The Life of Andrew Jackson, won the National Book Award upon its completion in 1984. Now, Remini captures the essence of the life and career of the seventh president of the United States in the meticulously crafted single-volume abridgement.

    This distinguished leader, the only Democrat elected to the presidency between the Civil War and World War I, rose to political prominence through the ranks of mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York before his election to this nation's highest office. Always concerned with the majority, never the favored few, Cleveland believed his ultimate allegiance was to the nation, not to a political party, and he acted on his strongly-held beliefs throughout his entire political life. At first considered an enemy of labor because of his firm handling of the bloody Chicago Pullman strike, many historians have overlooked Cleveland's numerous accomplishments, including his heroic quest to improve the quality of life for American Indians, his battles against the railroads and big business to prevent the destruction of American land, and his insistence on tariff reduction and remaining on the Gold Standard, which saved the nation from bankruptcy. The only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms, Grover Cleveland was the only president to be married in the White House and also the first to have a child in the White House.Brodsky's engrossing work follows Grover Cleveland through his early life in upstate New York, his career as a trial lawyer, mayor, and governor through to his first and second presidencies and his last years as a lecturer and beloved member of the administration at Princeton University. Each chapter will cause readers to reevaluate our perception of this underrated President who, in his dying words said, "I tried so hard to do right," and to evaluate him in the context of his successors.

    A fierce fighter in four critical Revolutionary War battles and a courageous survivor of Valley Forge and a near-fatal wound at the Battle of Trenton, James Monroe (1751–1831) went on to become America’s first full-time politician, dedicating his life to securing America’s national and international durability.Decorated by George Washington for his exploits as a soldier, Monroe became a congressman, a senator, U.S. minister to France and Britain, governor of Virginia, secretary of state, secretary of war, and finally America’s fifth president. The country embraced Monroe’s dreams of empire and elected him to two terms, the second time unanimously. Mentored by each of America’s first four presidents, Monroe was unquestionably the best prepared president in our history.Like David McCullough’s John Adams and Jon Meacham’s recent book on Andrew Jackson, this new biography of Monroe is both a solid read and stellar scholarship—history in the grand tradition.

    In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment.

    The predominate picture that we have of him is that of a weak and shallow man, a "mediocrity" who left little imprint upon the history of the United States. This stereotype, however, is grossly misleading, for Franklin Pierce was not a simple man. Indeed, his personality was complex, made up of varying strengths and conflicting inadequacies, while his life, full of inner turmoil, had an aspect of overwhelming tragedy. This authoritative biography makes available a full-scale study of an unusually interesting human being. With the same thoroughness and intensity that have distinguished all if his historical writing, Roy F. Nichols follows Pierce's life from his earliest years in New Hampshire, though his college career at Bowdoin, his marriage into the distinguished ranks of an established New England family, his rise in politics, his services as a brigadier general of volunteers in the Mexican War, and his election to the Presidency as a "dark Horse" candidate of the Democratic Party. Mr. Nichols minutely examines all the domestic and international crises that beset Pierce's administration - - the growing conflict between North and South that was to erupt within a decade into civil war, the abortive attempt to annex Cuba, the troubled relations with England, the filibustering activities of such men as William Walker which aroused much resentment in Central America toward the United States. Not only does the author refashion the exciting events of these critical days in American history, but he also unfolds, with sympathy and compassion, the tragic developments that dogged Pierce in his personal life -- his difficult marriage, his wife's illness, the death of three sons, the final bleak years of obscurity before he passed away, almost forgotten by the nation he had served.

    James Garfield's 1880 dark horse campaign after the longest-ever Republican nominating convention, his victory in the closest-ever popular vote for president, his struggle against bitterly feuding factions once elected, and the public's response to his assassination is the most dramatic presidential odyssey of the Gilded Age—and among the most momentous in our nation's history. This journey through political backrooms, dazzling convention floors, and intrigue-filled congressional and White House chambers, reveals the era's decency and humanity as well as the sharp partisanship that exploded in the pistol shots of assassin Charles Guiteau, the disgruntled patronage-seeker eager to replace the elected Commander-in-Chief with one of his own choosing.