A Legacy of Leadership: Governors and American History

by Clayton McClure Brooks

Overview

In A Legacy of Leadership, top scholars and journalists create a new framework for understanding the contributions governors have made to defining democracy and shaping American history.

Structured chronologically, A Legacy of Leadership places governors in contrast and comparison with one another as well as within the context of their times to show how a century of dramatic developments—war and peace, depression and prosperity—led governors to rethink and expand their positions of leadership. The nine chapters of compelling new scholarship presented here connect the experiences of dynamic individual governors and the evolution of the gubernatorial office to the broader challenges the United States has faced throughout the turbulent twentieth century. Taken together, they demonstrate how interstate cooperation became essential as governors increasingly embraced national and international perspectives to promote their own states' competitiveness.

Published for the centennial of the National Governors Association, A Legacy of Leadership is an eloquent demonstration of how, to a great extent, we live in a country that governors created.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812240948
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	07/16/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Clayton McClure Brooks is a National Governors Association Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Raymond C. Scheppach   Eric J. Vettel     vii
Introduction: Governing the Twentieth Century: Building a History of the Modern Governorship   Clayton McClure Brooks     1
Governing the 1910s     9
Challenges of a New Century: Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era   John Milton Cooper, Jr.     12
Governing the 1920s and 1930s     35
Huey Long and the Great Depression: Rise of a Populist Demagogue   Richard D. White, Jr.     41
Governing the 1940s     59
The Gangbuster as Governor: Thomas E. Dewey and the Republican New Deal   Richard Norton Smith     63
Governing the 1950s     81
Connecting the United States: Governors and the Building of the Interstate System   Dan McNichol     85
Governing the 1960s     111
Governors in the Civil Rights Era: The Wallace Factor   Jeff Frederick     115
Governing the 1970s     133
Preparing for the Presidency: The Political Education of Ronald Reagan   Lou Cannon     137
Governing the 1980s     157
Devolution in American Federalism in the Twentieth Century   Richard P. Nathan     161
Governing the 1990s     179
The Case of AnnRichards: Women in the Gubernatorial Office   Jan Reid     183
Conclusion: The Evolution of the Gubernatorial Office: United States Governors over the Twentieth Century   Thad L. Beyle     202
Afterword: Governing the Twenty-First Century     219
Timeline of Governors and States in the Twentieth Century     223
Notes     247
Further Resources     273
List of Contributors     275
Index     279
Acknowledgments     289