AL MOMENTO ESAURITO
Informazioni su questo prodotto
Product Identifiers
PublisherSimon & Schuster
ISBN-100743203941
ISBN-139780743203944
eBay Product ID (ePID)5962286
Product Key Features
Book Title1912 : Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs-The Election That Changed the Country
Number of Pages336 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2004
TopicPolitical Process / Campaigns & Elections, United States / 20th Century, General, United States / General
IllustratorYes
GenrePolitical Science, History
AuthorJames Chace
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height9.6 in
Item Weight18.6 Oz
Item Length1.2 in
Item Width6.4 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN2004-041660
ReviewsArthur Schlesinger, Jr.In1912, four formidable personalities of mythic proportions clashed in their quest for the presidency. This was a unique event in American history, and James Chace does full justice to a dramatic story., Ron Chernowauthor ofTitanandAlexander Hamilton James Chace has served up a rich, irresistible slice of Americana in recounting the storied 1912 presidential campaign. He gives us red-blooded American politics as it was once practiced, complete with bunting and brass bands, whistle-stop tours and frenzied, whooping crowds, shady bosses and spirited reformers deadlocked in sweltering conventions. So many major themes of the coming century were first enunciated here. Best of all, Chace supplies sharply etched portraits of the four leather-lunged, barnstorming giants -- Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Eugene Debs -- who waged this most memorable contest.1912seems like the perfect home companion for this or any other presidential election year., David Fromkinauthor ofIn the Time of the AmericansandEurope's Last Summer Roosevelt, Wilson, Taft, Debs -- four of America's political giants in the decades when the twentieth century was young -- each commanded the enthusiastic faith of millions. The country's two-party system, unable to contain the clashing ambitions of all four, broke down in the presidential election of 1912. This is the riveting story that James Chace tells in his important new book,1912, which is peopled with outsized, colorful characters and punctuated by wonderful anecdotes. It has much to tell us that is of value today, and it abounds in 'what ifs': moments when, but for some minor accident, American, and even world, history might have turned around and gone the other way., Richard Norton Smithauthor ofPatriarch James Chace is a great storyteller, capturing in prose as vivid as the year itself all the poignancy and egotism, crusading zeal and authentic passion of an electrifying contest for America's soul., Ronald Steelauthor of In Love with Night1912relates with brio, high drama, and authority the struggle of four powerful men fighting not only for the presidency but for the soul of American politics. James Chace brings vividly to life the election that shaped the nation's future, and in doing so illuminates the momentous choices Americans faced then and face again today.
Dewey Edition22
Dewey Decimal324.973/0912
Table Of ContentContents Prologue: The Defining MomentPart One: America's DestinyOne: "Back from Elba"Two: "The Ruthlessness of the Pure in Heart"Three: The Heirs of Hamilton and JeffersonFour: The Debs RebellionPart Two: Chicago and BaltimoreFive: "Stripped to the Buff"Six: "A Rope of Sand"Seven: Standing at ArmageddonEight: The Fullness of TimeNine: BaltimoreTen: The Indispensable ManEleven: To Make a Revolution: Debs and HaywoodPart Three: The ContendersTwelve: The New Freedom vs. the New NationalismThirteen: The CrusaderFourteen: The MoralistFifteen: The Authentic Conservative and the Red ProphetSixteen: "To Kill a Bull Moose"Part Four: The Consequences of VictorySeventeen: The Ironies of FateEighteen: EndgamesEpilogue: The InheritorsNotesBibliographical NoteAcknowledgmentsIndex
SynopsisFour extraordinary men sought the presidency in 1912. Theodore Roosevelt was the charismatic and still wildly popular former president who sought to redirect the Republican Party toward a more nationalistic, less materialistic brand of conservatism and the cause of social justice.His handpicked successor and close friend, William Howard Taft, was a reluctant politician whose sole ambition was to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Amiable and easygoing, Taft was the very opposite of the restless Roosevelt. After Taft failed to carry forward his predecessor's reformist policies, an embittered Roosevelt decided to challenge Taft for the party's nomination. Thwarted by a convention controlled by Taft, Roosevelt abandoned the GOP and ran in the general election as the candidate of a third party of his own creation, the Bull Moose Progressives.Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton University, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the party bosses who had made him New Jersey's governor. A noted political theorist, he was a relative newcomer to the practice of governing, torn between his fear of radical reform and his belief in limited government.The fourth candidate, labor leader Eugene V. Debs, had run for president on the Socialist ticket twice before. A fervent warrior in the cause of economic justice for the laboring class, he was a force to be reckoned with in the great debate over how to mitigate the excesses of industrial capitalism that was at the heart of the 1912 election.Chace recounts all the excitement and pathos of a singular moment in American history: the crucial primaries, the Republicans' bitter nominating convention that forever split the party, Wilson's stunning victory on the forty-sixth ballot at the Democratic convention, Roosevelt's spectacular coast-to-coast whistle-stop electioneering, Taft's stubborn refusal to fight back against his former mentor, Debs's electrifying campaign appearances, and Wilson's "accidental election" by less than a majority of the popular vote.Had Roosevelt received the Republican nomination, he almost surely would have been elected president once again and the Republicans would likely have become a party of reform. Instead, the GOP passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and the party remains to this day riven by the struggle between reform and reaction, isolationism and internationalism.The 1912 presidential contest was the first since the days of Jefferson and Hamilton in which the great question of America's exceptional destiny was debated. 1912 changed America.
LC Classification NumberE765.C47 2004
