Amazon.com
A powerful account of America at its best--Congress ratifying a national demand for civil rights for blacks. Robert Mann, a veteran Senate aid, recalls the political courage of Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota against the Senate. Despite criticism from liberals and conservatives, the two worked together to combat Richard B. Russell of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services committee and leader of the Southern Democrats' effort to block civil rights measures. The tenacity and creativity of Johnson and Humphrey led to Russell's demise and the passing of John F. Kennedy's civil rights bill in 1965.
Book Description
In a “rich and engrossing” narrative (Philadelphia Inquirer) that is “filled with sparring and thrilling maneuvers” (San Diego Union-Tribune), Robert Mann brings to life the high-stakes political gamesmanship that led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Black-and-white photographs.
Customer Reviews:
A Must Read.......2004-09-09
Robert Mann writes the definitive book on the inner workings of Washington. The story of how the civil rights legislation passed in the mid 60's got its start at the 1948 Democratic convention is compelling. It is difficult to put down once you've started. The characters are larger than life, Humphrey, the passionate and visionary liberal, Johnson the pragmatic magician of the senate and later president, Richard Russell, the dean of the southern conservatives, Strom Thurmond, Richard Nixon, Everett Dirksen all provide color for the book and show the deal making, cojoling and outright intimidation that was used to achieve these milestones in legislative history. Mr. Mann shows the human side of all the players while providing an excellent overview of how legislation is borne, cultivated and finally passed. If you want to understand how the system works, read this book.
Story of struggle and inspiration.......2002-02-24
The Walls of Jericho offers a riveting, close-up and personal review of the political struggles of the Civil Rights movement, seen through the eyes of three is its major protagonists. Author Robert Mann carries us to know and understand southerner, racist Richard Russell, southerner human rights supporter Lyndon Johnson, and northerner firebrand liberal Hubert Humphrey. We agree with them, or disagree with them, Mann allows us to understand where they are coming from. In the end, they are good men trying to do good things, as they see them to be good. I was emotionally struck in reading about the personal, political, and social interplay.
A highly perceptive and well written account........2002-01-07
This is a clear discussion of the process whereby civil rights legislation passed the Senate in the late 1950's and the 1960's, despite the filibusters threatened and actual of the Southern Democratic senators. It could easily have been a book about political re-alignment as well, but it would probably need to be twice as long. Many of the trends that dictated the course of American politics in the 1960's are seen in microcosm in this book - Would the South bolt the Democratic Party? Would the Democrats capture the African-American vote from the party of Lincoln? Could a Southern Democrat win the Whitehouse? Would the Dixiecrats throw the presidency to the GOP? It is an extremely clear narrative, that occasionally looks at the bigger picture of American politics, and records the force of personality in parliamentary politics. It clearly records the seismic changes that the wily and calculating LBJ, as an otherwise unelectable Southern Democrat, wrought to the Democratic Party after President Kennedy's death, in the search for a personal victory in the 1964 presidential election.
An excellent book on civil rights and politics.......2001-03-07
Having grown up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Hubert Humphrey is remembered and revered, and then living in Atlanta, Georgia for 14 years, the land of Martin Luther King and Richard Russell (and the region of LBJ), I was very intrigued by the subject of this book. I also found it refreshingly evenhanded, yet an intimate and personal view into one of the most important periods of American history, written about a subject that not only is in the forefront of out collective attention, but has been so since before our nation was founded. Not only that, it was a good read, with as much excitement and plot twists as the latest from Grisham.
If you are at all interested in Civil Rights, or you just like reading about politics, this is a very good place to start.
high praise for an intricately balanced book.......1998-09-23
Can America's favorite topic of dissent--race--in an historical context be explained rationally and with fairness from all perspectives? Anyone reading this book, which looks at the finely nuanced legislative maneuvers of those who both proposed as well as opposed the major civil rights initiatives of the 1960s in Congress, would have to say yes. Robert Mann, who is also the author of a fine and revealing biography of Louisiana Senator Russell Long, pulls off what seems like the impossible as he serves up deeply sympathetic profiles of Senator Richard Russell, who maintained a last-ditch effort against civil rights legislation, the always-bouyant Hubert Humprey, who was civil right's greatest friend in Washington, and Lyndon Johnson, who, in an act of unheralded nobility, staked his entire presidency upon the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the even-more politically vital 1965 Voting Rights Act. Most of us know the civil rights struggle from the perspective of the brave activists, inspired by Martin Luther King, who fought for their vision on the streets. Now meet the mysterious and mighty men of Washington who transformed that vision into reality.
Customer Reviews:
A nostalgic look at the Democratic party.......2007-10-20
S. I. Hiyakawa long ago taught us to pay attention to how certain words are used as purr-words, while other words are used as snarl-words. Jeff Taylor uses "populist" as a purr-word and "elitist" as a snarl-word. Working with the rabble-rousing contrast of "populist" and "elitist," Taylor surveys the history of the Democratic party. In his view, the Democratic party has abandoned its populist heritage. In his view, William Jennings Bryan was the last great Democratic populist. Taylor uses Hubert Humphrey as a key figure representing the movement of the Democratic party away from its populist past and toward its elitist tendencies in the 20th and the 21st centuries.
Taylor nostalgically yearns to see the Democratic party today become more populist, as he uses this term. However, he indicts the Democratic party for, among other things, being influenced by corporate donations and other big donors, which evidently smack of elitism, as he uses this term. But just how is the wished-for populist Democratic party supposed to be competitive without corporate donations and other big donors?
In summary, I don't think that Taylor has written a prescription for remedying the Democratic party today that will work.
--Thomas J. Farrell, author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Media Ecology)
Weird coincidences in a Twllight Zone world.......2006-11-21
Read this book, and you just might join the Democratic party again, or form your own. St. Jude smiles on lost causes, and this is a book that might renew your faith in a few.
Amazon readers, I have always told you the truth and never lied to you, except for entertainment purposes and always with full disclosure. In the interest of which, please be advised that I am not the same Jeff Taylor who wrote this excellent book. I wrote two others instead; it's a common name. So far, I've tallied seven Jeff Taylors working in the fields of writing and journalism. Perhaps someday we'll gather and pool notes. In the meantime, I'd recommend this book if it were written by Joe Smith.
If you have reached a point of fatalism where your angst about politics has reached a fricking nadir or zenith, I humbly direct you to this book, written by Jeff Taylor, of whom (I hereby swear) I know not one iota of biographical data. We have never communicated in any way. Just happen to have the same name, and be authors of books.
If you want to find out how things went so far sideways and downhill after Carter and Clinton, if you'd like to connect some interesting dots,find your way out of the maze of what-happened, read this book. Buy it for those pathetic, lovable idealists who have let the Kerry/Edwards decal moulder on the back bumper of their Volvo Subaru Outwagon, and who probably feel like closet Republicans and who automatically pull green on the voting slots, out of guilt. (But they haven't read John Edwards' book, Home. Too busy working and worrying about personal death. They haven't read this book, either.)
Give it to them. Buy this book, wrap it for the holidays, and put it in the hands of your intelligent friends. Perhaps you can remake the world politically within your lifetime, by learning a little more about party history and party politics. For the first time in years, I'm registering to vote in the next election, after opting to abstain for the last few charades. Reading this book made me more optimistic; things have been terrible, even worse than now, for the Democrats before. If enough of us, whatever our names, exercise our rights to elect representatives with a life-friendly viewpoint, we just might fix the Titanic and save Troy, disarm the bomb at 11:11, and maybe build a world similar to the promised land of which Martin Luther King showed us a pure glimpse. No, you're right, it's impossible... so just read this book for pleasure and escape.
What Democrats Need to Know.......2006-10-11
Jeff Taylor's book is a must read for anyone who is interested in answering the question why the Democratic Party has struggled so much in national elections since 1950. His analysis of the terms Liberal and Conservative and how little they truly mean these days helps to clear away the misconceptions that are perpetuated by most pundits. Taylor is able to cut through the glossy veneer of platitudes used by both parties and substantiate that the Democratic Party of today has become disconnected from its populist origins. This is an outstanding work of scholarship. As a history professor, I highly recommend this book.
this book is revolutionary.......2006-09-10
Jeff Taylor's book is an excellent history of the Democratic party, exploring its history through the ideologies of Jefferson, William Jennings Bryan and Hubert Humpherey. Taylor views Bryan as the last of the populist, middle America Democrats, the type of isolationist, anti-Supreme Court, pro-direct democracy and pro-small government Democrat that is very rare in today's world. Humpherey, and by implication the usual nominees of the Democrats of today, represents a pro-globalist, pro-mass immigration (in spite of its impact on wages), often pro-war, pro-corporate pro-big government, pro-activist Supreme Court. Concerning religion, Bryan also represented a pro-Christian, albeit a populist, "social" Christian outlook that is sorely lacking among current Democratic nominees, though not among its electorate, as is proven by the votes of Democratic leaning voters in referenda and opinion polls on issues as diverse as immigration, abortion and same sex marriage.
Taylor argues that Democratic leaders of today are "Hamiltonians", believers in the concept of a strong central government. Democrats of today would argue that they might be Hamiltonians, but for Jeffersonian ends, i.e. they are for a big federal government but because of the good it will do for the common man. Taylor addresses the validity of this issue somewhat, though I'd like to see more disscussion of just who benefits from big government. I love his analysis of why Democrats have lost their way in terms of their hiding behind the activist Warren courts of the 50's and 60's to get their legislative dirty work accomplished. Taylor points out that it represents a dangerous approach, something that Bryan, with his support of direct democracy (i.e. initiative and referendum) and his opposition to what was at the time considered a conservative, anti-labour judiciary, would have shied away from.
I also enjoyed his discussion about the WW2 era, where liberals such as Sen. Wheeler of Montana, or Lafollette of Wisconsin, became "conservatives" just because they were opposed to our intervention.
Taylor argues that conservative populists such as Buchanan and liberal populists such as Jerry Brown and Ralph Nader actually have a lot in common, far more in common with each other than Buchanan would have with, say, Arlen Specter, or Dennis Hastert, or Nader would have in common with a typical DLC Democrat like Clinton. In France this has been the case in the opposition to France's deepening involvement with the European Union. There, rightist groupings such as the National Front and leftist movements from the Communist Party to other leftist splinter groups have successfully mobilized a majority to vote against the most recent European Union constitution.
I urge anyone who wonders why just because someone is pro-life that means they must be pro-Iraq war, or just because someone is pro-2nd Amendment that means they must be for tax cuts for the rich, or why someone who supports immigration reduction should be anti-union, to read this book. Taylor gives a great overview of a compelling, pro-middle America, pro-common people, pro-conservative values, pro direct democracy heritage in the Democratic party, a Jeffersonian heritage best represented in the 20th Century by William Jennings Bryan.
Jefferson's Party Is not what he left .......2006-08-02
This excellent book outlines the various phases that the Democratic Party has transitioned through the ages since it's founding by Thomas Jefferson. This is a study in Jeffersonism and includes many pages of notes and references. It takes us through the period of William Jennings Bryan and Hubert Humphrey as well as some interesting facts about Thomas Jefferson.
As A Jefferson Family Historian who assisted with the Jefferson-Hemings DNA Study,I was immediately taken with the clarity and thorougness of the author's extensive research on the topics of slavery, religion and the DNA Study.
He elaborates on the first lies by a disreputable reporter and the historical and conjecture and psychological guesswork, unorthodox and questionable conclusions in a book popular among nonacademics but widely dismissed by scholars. Most historians rejected her theory concerning Jefferson and Hemings. The Nature Journal article mischaracterized the DNA results. The historian cowriting this article seemed motivated at least by a desire to excuse the sexual and legal misconduct of the then-current White House occupant. This refers Professor Joseph Ellis who was later exposed by the Boston Globe for lying to his Mt. Holyoke College students about his NON Vietnam service and other personal misstatements. His Nature article was also mistated grosely.
The author points out that an interesting and underreported twist, the DNA tests essentially disproved any genetic tie between Jefferson and the focus of the original Callender allegation, Sally Hemings. DNA proved NO DNA match and thus the long claimed Tom Woodson of family lore and misguided and biased films and TV specials are just that, FICTION. Mr. Jefferson was most adamant in his opposition to miscegenation and the debate may may be nothing more than an interesting diversion, since the scant evidence we have is inconclusive. Mr. Taylor cites referencies such as The Jefferson Myth and the Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission.
Herbert Barger, Jefferson Family Historian
Book Description
Was the public interest served in Minnesota's ten-year political brawl over the Metrodome? This case study tells the story of how a $55 million domed stadium called the Hubert Humphrey Metrodome came to be built in Minneapolis. More importantly, it offers an opportunity to explore the way things work in American politics: the shifting coalitions and uncertain outcomes; the scattered interests and chaotic atmosphere; the differing conceptions of what serves the public interest. This is not an idealized version of how things should work in American politics, but a story of how they do work!
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Hubert H. Humphrey: The Politics of Joy
Charles L. Garrettson III
Manufacturer: Transaction Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1560000295 |
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One of the first Europeans to discover North America, Leif Eriksson landed on its shores around the year 1000. His expedition was part of a great era of exploration and migration for the Nordic people and the beginning of a long history of Scandinavian involvement in the New World. By the middle of the nineteenth century, huge waves of America fever had spread through the Scandinavian countries and by 1907 an official of the Swedish government reported that it was difficult to find a farm where none of the immediate family was in America. Today, approximately 11.5 million Americans describe themselves as being of Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Finnish, or Danish descent, a number that equals half the population of the five countries from which they and their ancestors came. The Scandinavian American Family Album tells the history of this tremendous wave of immigration and of the contribution of Scandinavian people to the growth and development of the United States. Through their own diaries, letters, and through interviews, rare photographs, and songs, we are treated to a firsthand account of the hardships, challenges, and triumphs that awaited the generations of Scandinavian immigrants who made their way across the ocean to start new lives in America. We learn about their day-to-day life before emigration, the factors--such as social inequality, financial hardship, and overpopulation--that contributed to their decisions to leave, of their experience upon landing at Ellis Island, and the various occupations that they settled into as they began to establish homes and communities. We discover that the Danes were the first European settlers in the Bronx and Harlem in New York City and that Swedes and Finns built the first log cabins. Personal accounts describe homesteads and early colonies set up all over the country, from Maine to Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, and as far west as Utah and Nebraska. These early immigrants and their descendants tell us about pioneering farming ventures, the dangers and hardships of logging and mining, the thrill of the gold rush, and the struggle of early labor movements. All across the country, Scandinavian Americans played a key role in building the institutions and communities that still exist today. Among those who made distinguished contributions to American life and culture are Jacob Riis, the founder of modern photojournalism; Thorstein Veblen, renowned economist; sports legends Knute Rockne and Babe Didrikson Zaharias; aviator Charles Lindbergh; and Knute Nelson, the first Scandinavian American governor of Minnesota. Others profiled include actress Candice Bergen, dancer Peter Martins, Norman Borlaug, the first agricultural scientist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, novelist Ole Rolvaag and Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who created the giant heads of four presidents on Mt. Rushmore. The stories and memories contained in this album, illustrated with vivid photographs drawn from a vast array of archives, make this volume a valuable window into the past of Scandinavian Americans and the country they now call home.
Customer Reviews:
A Family Album for Anyone.......2001-03-13
Leafing through a family album of photographs is a pleasant experience, especially when in the presence of a grandparent. This book is exactly like a fine evening spent with an older relative and a stack of photographs, recipes, memorabilia, and the rich storehouse of memories in an old person's mind. I loved reading this book. It provided me with a chance to learn about the life of my grandparents. Even though they died when I was a child, this book helped me to find answers to the types of questions that I would have loved to ask them as an adult.
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Green Marketing
Jacquelyn A. Ottman
Manufacturer: NTC Business Books
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0844232505 |
Customer Reviews:
A Fine Biography of a Misunderstood Liberal Giant.......2001-07-07
Hubert Humphrey, who served in the US Senate for 24 years and dominated that body as few men ever have, has long been a greatly underrated figure by political biographers and historians. Far more than the Kennedy brothers or Lyndon Johnson, Humphrey was a crusader for liberal causes even when they were unpopular, and his leadership in the cause of civil rights puts virtually every other major politician to shame. Yet today Humphrey is almost forgotten by most Americans, and other, less worthy men have gained the credit for the social and economic change that should have been his. Carl Solberg, in this solidly-researched, if somewhat pedestrian biography, shows why Humphrey came to be a rather tragic figure in the history of American liberalism. Humphrey was born in 1911 in the tiny town of Doland (population, about 700) on the isolated South Dakota prairie. The dominant figure in his early life was his father, the town pharmacist and "token" Democrat, whom he adored. Humphrey's childhood was generally happy, but it came to an abrupt end when the Great Depression struck. All of Doland's banks closed and many other businesses failed as the local farmers and townsfolk couldn't afford to pay their bills. The Humphrey drugstore also suffered, and the family had to sell their handsome house and move into a much smaller one. Eventually, Humphrey's father gave up on the dying town and moved to the larger town of Huron, where the local townspeople at first gave his family the cold shoulder and the already-established pharmacists tried to run him out of business. The Humphreys had to fight to survive and young Hubert, who had dreamed of getting a college degree and leaving South Dakota behind, was forced to get a pharmacy degree and help his father run the drugstore. He hated it and after seven years finally told his father that he couldn't do it anymore. He went to college at the University of Minnesota, earned a master's degree in political science, and quickly moved into Democratic politics in the city of Minneapolis. At the age of 34 he was elected Mayor, where he rooted out crooks and helped the labor unions. In 1948 he first achieved the national spotlight with a dramatic speech to the Democratic National Convention in which he forcefully pushed the cause of civil rights for blacks, earning him friends among liberal Democrats but enraging the Southern segregationists, who vowed revenge. Elected to the US Senate in 1948, Humphrey was at first scorned by the angry Southern segregationists who ran the Senate and regarded Humphrey as a wild-eyed fanatic who wanted to give blacks the right to vote (which he did). Humphrey refused to be intimidated and stood his ground, eventually winning friends among liberal Northern Democrats and the respect and affection of even the Southerners. Yet time and again Humphrey, always a poor man in a rich man's political game, found himself passed over for Senate leadership posts and the Presidency by wealthier or less-liberal candidates. In 1960 Humphrey's underfunded presidential campaign was crushed by the Kennedys, who bought huge numbers of votes in the West Virginia primary to finish him off. In 1964 he was picked as Lyndon Johnson's running mate, but his four years as Vice-President were miserable. Johnson was consistently bullying and even backstabbing to Humphrey, despite his loyal service, and Humphrey's support of the Vietnam War (he felt obliged to support the President no matter what his own private feelings about the war) caused many of his liberal supporters to turn against him. In 1968 Humphrey finally won the Democrats' nomination for President, but the bloody riots outside the Convention between Chicago police and antiwar protestors, combined with a bitter split in the party over the Vietnam War, led to his narrow defeat by Republican Richard Nixon. Humphrey eventually made it back to the US Senate, but he was defeated in 1972 and 1976 by lesser-known (and lesser-qualified) Democrats for the presidential nomination. He died from cancer in 1978. Solberg's great insight in this biography is that Humphrey failed to become President because he was both ahead of, and then behind, his times. In the late 1940's and 1950's his fiery speeches on behalf of civil rights and other liberal causes led Democrats to complain that he was too "radical" and "extreme" to be elected President - he was too "liberal" for the country's mood. Yet by the late sixties his support of the Vietnam War led younger liberals to claim he was too "conservative" and "behind the times" to be President. Given Humphrey's achievements - Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, and the Peace Corps were just a few of his ideas which other Presidents put into place - many older liberals may regret that they didn't support him for President in 1968, and many younger liberals may wish they currently had a crusader like Humphrey to lead them. Although Solberg's writing style is rather pedestrian, overall he does a fine job of describing the life of a man who should be rated among the most creative political leaders of the last fifty years.
Solid biography, but nothing splendid.......1998-10-05
Solberg offers a well-researched and fair biography of one of America's greatest Senators this century and a former Vice President. From his pharmacy days till his death we get the full view of Humphrey's life. Maybe of more interest to history buffs than the average person, this is still well worth a read if you can track down a copy.
Extremely well written and an in-depth account of HHH's life.......1997-08-15
We know that Carl Solberg took this subject upon his own knowledge of this subject as a expert Time-Life staffer and Minnesota insider to undertake this project. It is a well written and well researched. There are not too many like this account. It fills in a dearth of Humphrey biographies
Extremely well written and an in-depth account of HHH's life.......1997-08-15
We know that Carl Solberg took this subject upon his own knowledge of this subject as a expert Time-Life staffer and Minnesota insider to undertake this project. It is a well written and well researched. There are not too many like this account. It fills in a dearth of Humphrey biographies
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