Suggestions on U.S. history/politics

Founding Brothers - Joseph J. Ellis
Truman - David McCullough

The Harry Truman biography is long but I learned lots about 20th century American history & politics.

Killing Patton

Your starting points should be Gordon Wood and Edmund S. Morgan.

Do you even Good Will Hunting?

Just finished The Gatekeepers which chronicles all of the White House Chiefs of Staff from the Nixon Administration to Obama.

Fascinating. Highly recommend.

I read one of those. It was fascinating. I never thought of a biography as a page turner until picking that one up.

In the middle of Heirs of the Founders:

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In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms.

Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina’s John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery.

Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, “the immortal trio” had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart.

Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

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Really enjoying this book. It's basically about the most influential politicians that rose to prominence as the Founding Fathers had all retired or passed away. It's focus is on Henry Clay, John C Calhoun, and Daniel Webster as they and a few other prominent politicians sought to lead the US in what they thought was what the Founders intended. I'm just getting to the part about Texas and westward expansion.

It's amazing that the stuff they debated then is the same stuff we still debate today - tariffs/free trade, how active the US should be in world affairs/promoting democracy, slander during political campaigns, etc.

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1920 The Year of the Six Presidents: David Pietrusza - Amazon.com

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The presidential election of 1920 was among history's most dramatic. Six once-and-future presidents-Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt-jockeyed for the White House. With voters choosing between Wilson's League of Nations and Harding's front-porch isolationism, the 1920 election shaped modern America. Women won the vote. Republicans outspent Democrats by 4 to 1, as voters witnessed the first extensive newsreel coverage, modern campaign advertising, and results broadcast on radio. America had become an urban nation: Automobiles, mass production, chain stores, and easy credit transformed the economy. 1920 paints a vivid portrait of America, beset by the Red Scare, jailed dissidents, Prohibition, smoke-filled rooms, bomb-throwing terrorists, and the Klan, gingerly crossing modernity's threshold.

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I just read this recently, and it's become on of my all time favorite history books. Not only is the wheeling and dealing at the nominating conventions fascinating, but the book is often laugh out loud funny -- surely a rare quality in history books, at least in my experience

The same author has also written books on 1932 and 1948 (which I've read), and 1960, which I plan to read soon.

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Just finished a very similar book

Just Plain Dick: Richard Nixon’s Checkers Speech and the “Rocking, Socking” Election of 1952



Highly recommended as well.





RIP