Alvin Felzenberg is a presidential historian, political scientist, and author known for his work on the American presidency and conservative political figures. He wrote for The Weekly Standard over nearly two decades, contributing essays and reviews on presidential history, political leadership, and notable conservative figures including William F. Buckley Jr. and Nancy Reagan. He is the author of books including *The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't)* and a biography of Buckley.
James Rosen has executed a smart idea that never occurred to William F. Buckley Jr.: He has assembled a collection of some of the best obituaries Buckley penned in more than a half-century as commentator, political activist, and public intellectual. Buckley aficionados, general readers, and the…
James Rosen has executed a smart idea that never occurred to William F. Buckley Jr.: He has assembled a collection of some of the best obituaries Buckley penned in more than a half-century as commentator, political activist, and public intellectual. Buckley aficionados, general readers, and the…
Actor James Stewart once speculated that had Ronald Reagan met Nancy Davis before he married Jane Wyman, Reagan never would have gone into politics. “She would have seen to it that he got all the best parts … won three or four Oscars and been a real star." That was his way of saying that, but for…
Of the thousands of books on Congress and the legislative process that adorn the shelves of libraries, few tell the story of how bills actually become laws—least of all in a way sure to capture the attention of both practitioners and curious laypeople. Here, Michael Allen does precisely this, and…
Michael Barone may well have intended his exciting new book to make its appearance precisely when Congress turned its attention to immigration reform. That Congress had its attention turned elsewhere should not surprise him. One of the themes in this lively, entertaining, and informative work is…
Ronald Reagan astonished much of Washington when, in 1981, he hung Calvin Coolidge’s portrait in the White House Cabinet Room.
The Truth Is Our Weapon
The Conquerors Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 by Michael Beschloss Simon & Schuster, 377 pp., $26.95 A RECENT Washington Post headline for an excerpt from Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" read, "A Struggle for the President's Heart and Mind." Had such a headline…
All on Fire William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery St. Martin's, 707 pp., $32.50 IN 1984, in Biloxi, Mississippi, deep in the heart of the old Confederacy, the future Senate majority leader Trent Lott declared that "the spirit of Jefferson Davis" now lives in the Republican party.
WHAT DAVID HALBERSTAM DID IN THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST to explain the formation and failure of America’s intervention in Vietnam, Vincent J. Cannato has now done in The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York for the domestic equivalent, the response to the "urban crisis"…
ANYONE WHO THINKS THE WRITING OF BIOGRAPHIES a declining art will be buoyed by the appearance of John Aloysius Farrell’s monumental study of legendary Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. In Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century, Farrell attempts, as his title suggests, both to tell the…
Before the Storm
An Honest President
Woodrow Wilson
Once Upon a Time in New York
It's been twenty-five years since the only resignation of an American president, but our fascination with that complicated man, Richard Nixon, seems to continue unabated.
In 1984, in Biloxi, Mississippi, deep in the heart of the old Confederacy, the future Senate majority leader Trent Lott declared that "the spirit of Jefferson Davis" now lives in the Republican party.
What is it about Robert Kennedy that continues to fascinate students and practitioners of American politics thirty years after his death?
CHANGE THE NAME of the nation's capital and of the bridge that spans the Hudson? Remove the statues of our first president from Boston Common, Wall Street, the state capitol in Richmond, and hundreds of town squares? Close Mount Vernon? Level the Washington Monument and the famous square that bears…