Mourning the Presidents

Mourning the Presidents PDF Author: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813949300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The death of a chief executive, regardless of the circumstances—sudden or expected, still in office or decades later—is always a moment of reckoning and reflection. Mourning the Presidents brings together renowned and emerging scholars to examine how different generations and communities of Americans have eulogized and remembered US presidents since George Washington’s death in 1799. Over twelve individually illuminating chapters, this volume offers a unique approach to understanding American culture and politics by uncovering parallels between different generations of mourners, highlighting distinct experiences, and examining what presidential deaths can tell us about societal fissures at various critical points in the nation’s history, right up to the present moment.

Mourning the Presidents

Mourning the Presidents PDF Author: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813949300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
The death of a chief executive, regardless of the circumstances—sudden or expected, still in office or decades later—is always a moment of reckoning and reflection. Mourning the Presidents brings together renowned and emerging scholars to examine how different generations and communities of Americans have eulogized and remembered US presidents since George Washington’s death in 1799. Over twelve individually illuminating chapters, this volume offers a unique approach to understanding American culture and politics by uncovering parallels between different generations of mourners, highlighting distinct experiences, and examining what presidential deaths can tell us about societal fissures at various critical points in the nation’s history, right up to the present moment.

This Republic of Suffering

This Republic of Suffering PDF Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375703837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Cabinet

The Cabinet PDF Author: Lindsay M. Chervinsky
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674986482
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Winner of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Excellence in American History Book Award Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize “Cogent, lucid, and concise...An indispensable guide to the creation of the cabinet...Groundbreaking...we can now have a much greater appreciation of this essential American institution, one of the major legacies of George Washington’s enlightened statecraft.” —Ron Chernow On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries—Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph—for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrection, and constitutional challenges—and finding congressional help distinctly lacking—he decided he needed a group of advisors he could turn to for guidance. Authoritative and compulsively readable, The Cabinet reveals the far-reaching consequences of this decision. To Washington’s dismay, the tensions between Hamilton and Jefferson sharpened partisan divides, contributing to the development of the first party system. As he faced an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, he came to treat the cabinet as a private advisory body, greatly expanding the role of the executive branch and indelibly transforming the presidency. “Important and illuminating...an original angle of vision on the foundations and development of something we all take for granted.” —Jon Meacham “Fantastic...A compelling story.” —New Criterion “Helps us understand pivotal moments in the 1790s and the creation of an independent, effective executive.” —Wall Street Journal

The Death of a President

The Death of a President PDF Author: William Manchester
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 031637072X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
William Manchester's epic and definitive account of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. As the world still reeled from the tragic and historic events of November 22, 1963, William Manchester set out, at the request of the Kennedy family, to create a detailed, authoritative record of the days immediately preceding and following President John F. Kennedy's death. Through hundreds of interviews, abundant travel and firsthand observation, and with unique access to the proceedings of the Warren Commission, Manchester conducted an exhaustive historical investigation, accumulating forty-five volumes of documents, exhibits, and transcribed tapes. His ultimate objective -- to set down as a whole the national and personal tragedy that was JFK's assassination -- is brilliantly achieved in this galvanizing narrative, a book universally acclaimed as a landmark work of modern history.

Designing Camelot

Designing Camelot PDF Author: James Archer Abbott
Publisher: International Thomson Publishing Services
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This exquisite book documents the extensive restoration of the White House under the Kennedy administration. It examines the physical transformation of America's premier residence from "home of the President" to house-museum". Kennedy enthusiasts, architects, interior designers, collectors, history buffs, preservationists, and White House watchers alike will covet this book. Full color throughout.

FDR's Funeral Train

FDR's Funeral Train PDF Author: Robert Klara
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0230105939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The April 1945 journey of FDR's funeral train became a thousand-mile odyssey, fraught with heartbreak and scandal. As it passed through the night, few of the grieving onlookers gave thought to what might be happening behind the Pullman shades, where women whispered and men tossed back highballs. Inside was a Soviet spy, a newly widowed Eleanor Roosevelt, who had just discovered that her husband's mistress was in the room with him when he died, all the Supreme Court justices, and incoming president Harry S. Truman who was scrambling to learn secrets FDR had never shared with him. Weaving together information from long-forgotten diaries and declassified Secret Service documents, journalist and historian Robert Klara enters the private world on board that famous train. He chronicles the three days during which the country grieved and despaired as never before, and a new president hammered out the policies that would galvanize a country in mourning and win the Second World War.

Democracy's Big Day

Democracy's Big Day PDF Author: Jim Bendat
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781935278481
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Every four years, the world watches as the United States passes the title and power of the presidency from one person to another in a peaceful and orderly manner. With a formal ceremony, a large parade, and gala inaugural balls, its a big, colorful showone rich with history, tradition, and ritual. Through a compilation of vignettes, author Jim Bendat chronicles all of Inauguration Days historic events. Democracys Big Day tells stories about the outgoing and incoming presidents who did not get along, the chief justices who improperly administered the presidential oath, the vice president who showed up to the ceremony drunk, and the nine occasions in which the United States had an unplanned and unanticipated inaugurationoften for a nation in mourning. Democracys Big Day presents a comprehensive history of presidential inaugurationsfrom George Washington through Barack Obama. From the morning White House coffee gathering to the evenings parties, the author provides a captivating look at what is truly democracys biggest day.

The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia

The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia PDF Author: Smithsonian Institution
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588343251
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Which president holds the record for the most vetoes? Which president had the largest shoe size? Who was the only president to serve in both World War I and World War II? Who was the tallest president? These questions and many, many more are answered in The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia, which has been fully updated to 2024 to include trivia question and answers about every US president to date. Divided into 11 chapters, The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia looks at every aspect of our heads of state and presidential history: Citizens, Officers, Heroes, and Saviors; Stumping: From Front Porch to Facebook; The Pledge and the Parties; Inside the Oval Office; The Perpetual Podium; Home, Hotel, Parlor, Playground; First Families; Impeachment, Controversy, Shame; Assassination; Death, and National Mourning; Presidents in the Popular Imagination; and The Quotable President. Many of the questions are accompanied with photographs of artifacts from the Smithsonian's collections. The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia is sure to puzzle the trivia buff and presidential expert alike!

President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Tr

President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Tr PDF Author:
Publisher: Library of America
ISBN: 1598534025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
For the 150th anniversary, Harold Holzer (The Civil War in 150 Objects) presents an unprecedented firsthand chronicle of one of the most pivotal moments in American history. On April 14, 1865, Good Friday, the Civil War claimed its ultimate sacrifice. President Lincoln Assassinated!! recaptures the dramatic immediacy of Lincoln’s assassination, the hunt for the conspirators and their military trial, and the nation’s mourning for the martyred president. The fateful story is told in more than eighty original documents—eyewitness reports, medical records, trial transcripts, newspaper articles, speeches, letters, diary entries, and poems—by more than seventy-five participants and observers, including the assassin John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett, the soldier who shot him. Courtroom testimony exposes the intricacies of the plot to kill the president; eulogies by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell Phillips, and Benjamin Disraeli and poetry by Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and Julia Ward Howe give eloquent voice to grief; two emotional speeches by Frederick Douglass—one of them never before published—reveal his evolving perspective on Lincoln’s legacy. Together these voices combine to reveal the full panorama of one the most shocking and tragic events in our history.

Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren PDF Author: Edward L. Widmer
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805069224
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The first president born after America's independence ushers in a new era of no-holds-barred democracy The first "professional politician" to become president, the slick and dandyish Martin Van Buren was to all appearances the opposite of his predecessor, the rugged general and Democratic champion Andrew Jackson. Van Buren, a native Dutch speaker, was America's first ethnic president as well as the first New Yorker to hold the office, at a time when Manhattan was bursting with new arrivals. A sharp and adroit political operator, he established himself as a powerhouse in New York, becoming a U.S. senator, secretary of state, and vice president under Jackson, whose election he managed. His ascendancy to the Oval Office was virtually a foregone conclusion. Once he had the reins of power, however, Van Buren found the road quite a bit rougher. His attempts to find a middle ground on the most pressing issues of his day-such as the growing regional conflict over slavery-eroded his effectiveness. But it was his inability to prevent the great banking panic of 1837, and the ensuing depression, that all but ensured his fall from grace and made him the third president to be denied a second term. His many years of outfoxing his opponents finally caught up with him. Ted Widmer, a veteran of the Clinton White House, vividly brings to life the chaos and contention that plagued Van Buren's presidency-and ultimately offered an early lesson in the power of democracy.