When the first edition of this book appeared in 2003, it was chosen as a Main Selection of both the Book-of-the-Month Club and History Book Club and quickly became the standard work on the modern American presidency--from William McKinley through William Jefferson Clinton. In that original edition, Lewis L. Gould argued that, while the president may be the most powerful man in the world, most presidents have fallen well short of the daunting challenges that confronted them while in office.

During George W. Bush's two administrations, as Gould discusses in a substantial new chapter, those...

Alexander Terrell's career placed him at the center of some of the most pivotal events in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history, ranging from the Civil War to Emperor Maximilian's reign over Mexico and an Armenian genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Alexander Watkins Terrell at last provides the first complete biographical portrait of this complex figure.

Born in Virginia in 1827, Terrell moved to Texas in 1852, rising to the rank of Confederate brigadier general when the Civil War erupted. Afterwards, he briefly served in Maximilian's army before returning to...

In this fascinating study, Lewis L. Gould has brought a shadowy first lady into the light and restored her to a rightful place as a patron of music. Helen Herron Taft came to the White House intent on establishing Washington, D.C., as the nation's cultural capital. A stroke in May 1909 made her a semi-invalid, impaired her speech, and disrupted her agenda. Historians have written her off as a shrewish figure who pushed her portly husband into the presidency.

Gould challenges this outdated narrative with new information on Helen Taft's campaign to bring the best of classical music to the...

First published in 1991, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt has won acclaim as a lucid and thorough narrative of Roosevelt's two terms in the White House. Reviewers praised the depth of Lewis L. Gould's research, his comprehensive coverage of major aspects of Roosevelt's tenure, and the persuasiveness of his conclusions about his subject's personalized presidency. Writing in Reviews in American History, Willard Gatewood called the book "essential reading for all who wish to understand the complex, charismatic, and perennially fascinating political figure that was Theodore...

Few presidential couples enjoyed a closer relationship in the White House than Will and Nellie Taft. Throughout William Howard Taft's rise in American politics, she had been his most intimate confidant. When circumstances separated them, as when Helen Herron Taft became incapacitated by a stroke and was unable to accompany the president on his storied travels--or was herself on recuperative trips--she pressed him for letters, and he obliged with gossipy correspondence that provides a fascinating account of his presidency at decisive moments in his single term.

These 113 letters, all but a...

Imagine a presidential election with four well-qualified and distinguished candidates and a serious debate over the future of the nation Sound impossible in this era of attack ads and strident partisanship? It happened nearly a century ago in 1912, when incumbent Republican William Howard Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt running as the Progressive Party candidate, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs all spoke to major concerns of the American people and changed the landscape of national politics in the bargain.

The presidential election of...

Sagamore Hill was the home of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, from 1885 until his death in 1919. During Roosevelt's time in office, his "Summer White House" was the focus of international attention. Sagamore Hill is a unit of the National Park System. This historic resource study focuses on Roosevelt's life at Sagamore Hill.

Lewis L. Gould's 2003 history of the Republican Party was a fast- paced account of Republican fortunes. The Republicans won praise for its even-handed, incisive analysis of Republican history, drawing on Gould's deep knowledge of the evolution of national political history and acute feel for the interplay of personalities and ideology. In this revised and updated edition, Gould extends this history, adding a new chapter on the George W. Bush presidency, the election of 2008, and the response of the Grand Old Party to Barack Obama. His narrative covers such contemporary figures as Newt...

As our 27th president from 1909 to 1913, and then as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930, William Howard Taft was the only man ever to lead two of America's three governing branches. But between these two well-documented periods in office, there lies an eight-year patch of largely unexplored political wilderness. It was during this time, after all, that Taft somehow managed to rise from his ignominious defeat by both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election to achieve his lifelong goal of becoming chief justice. In the first in-depth look at this period in...

Fully examined for the first time in this engrossing book by one of America's preeminent presidential scholars, the election that pitted Woodrow Wilson against Charles Evan Hughes emerges as a clear template for the partisan differences of the modern era. The 1916 election dramatically enacted the two parties' fast-evolving philosophies about the role and reach of federal power. Lewis Gould reveals how, even more than in the celebrated election of 1912, the parties divided along class-based lines in 1916, with the Wilson campaign in many respects anticipating the New Deal while the...