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How much power does a president really have? Theories and arguments abound. Borrowing from Machiavelli, Bruce Miroff maps five fields of political struggle that presidents must traverse to make any headway: media, powerful economic interests, political coalitions, the high-risk politics of domestic policy, and the partisan politics of foreign policy.

Few first ladies have enjoyed a better reputation among historians than Edith Kermit Roosevelt. Aristocratic and sophisticated, tasteful and discreet, she managed the White House with a sure hand. Her admirers say that she never slipped in carrying out her duties as hostess, mother, and adviser to her husband. Lewis Gould's path-breaking study, however, presents a more complex and interesting figure than the somewhat secularized saint Edith Roosevelt has become in the literature on first ladies. While many who knew her found her inspiring and gracious, family members also recalled a more astringent and sometimes nasty personality. Gould looks beneath the surface of her life to examine the intricate legacy of her tenure from 1901 to 1909.The narrative in this book thus uncovers much new about Edith Roosevelt. Far from being averse to activism, Edith Roosevelt served as a celebrity sponsor at a New York musical benefit and also intervened in a high-profile custody dispute. Gould traces her role in the failed marriage of a United States senator, her efforts to secure the ambassador from Great Britain that she wanted, and the growing tension between her and Helen Taft in 1908-1909. Her commitment to bringing classical music artists to the White House, along with other popular performers, receives the fullest attention to date.Gould also casts a skeptical eye over the area where Edith Roosevelt's standing has been strongest, her role as a mother. He looks at how she and her husband performed as parents and dissents from the accustomed judgment that all was well with the way the Roosevelt offspring developed. Most important of all, Gould reveals the first lady's deep animus toward African Americans and their place in American society. She believed "e;that any mixture of races is an unmitigated evil."e; The impact of her bigotry on Theodore Roosevelt's racial policies must now be an element in any future discussion of that sensitive subject.On balance, Gould finds that Edith Roosevelt played an important and creative part in how the institution of the first lady developed during the twentieth century. His sprightly retelling of her White House years will likely provoke controversy and debate. All those interested in how the role of the presidential wife has evolved will find in this stimulating book a major contribution to the literature on a fascinating president. It also brings to life a first lady whose legacy must now be seen in a more nuanced and challenging light.

Provides an account of relations between American spymasters and Capitol Hill. This book provides a historical perspective for debates in Congress and beyond concerning the agency's recent failures and ultimate fate. It shows that anxieties over the challenges to democracy posed by our intelligence communities have been with us from the beginning.

Republicans today often ask, What would Reagan do? The short answer: probably not what they think. Hero of modern-day conservatives, Ronald Reagan was not even conservative enough for some of his most ardent supporters in his own timeand today his practical, often bipartisan approach to politics and policy would likely be deemed apostasy. To try to get a clearer picture of what the real Reagan legacy is, in this book Marcus M. Witcher details conservatives frequently tense relationship with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and explores how they created the latter-day Reagan myth.Witcher reminds us that during Reagans time in office, conservative critics complained that he had failed to bring about the promised Reagan Revolutionand in 1988 many Republican hopefuls ran well to the right of his policies. Notable among the dissonant acts of his administration: Reagan raised taxes when necessary, passed comprehensive immigration reform, signed a bill that saved Social Security, and worked with adversaries at home and abroad to govern effectively. Even his signature accomplishmentinvoked by Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!was highly unpopular with the Conservative Caucus, as evidenced in their newspaper ads comparing the president to Neville Chamberlain: Appeasement is as Unwise in 1988 as in 1938.Reagans presidential library and museum positioned him above partisan politics, emphasizing his administrations role in bringing about economic recovery and negotiating an end to the Cold War. How this legacy, as Reagan himself envisioned it, became the more grandiose version fashioned by Republicans after the 1980s tells us much about the late twentieth-century transformation of the GOPand, as Witchers work so deftly shows, the conservative movement as we know it now.

The American presidency is not what it once was. Nor, Stephen Knott contends, what it was meant to be. Taking on an issue as timely as Donald Trump's latest tweet and old as the American republic, Knott documents the devolution of the American presidency from the neutral, unifying office into the demagogic, partisan entity of our day.

The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 left tens of thousands without housing, food, fuel, or clothing. In the aftermath the mayor handed all relief duties to the commercial elite at the Chicago Relief and Aid Society. This was, as this study shows, a decision that ensured Chicago's physical rebuilding would be coupled with a rebuilding of the city's poor.

In a polarized time of partisan fervor, the US Supreme Court's routine work of judicial review is increasingly viewed through a political lens, decried by one side or the other as judicial overreach, or ""legislating from the bench"". But is this really the case? Keith Whittington asks in this volume, a first-of-its-kind history of judicial review.

With its high plains, rolling hills, and river valleys, Kansas is home to a surprisingly diverse flora, and among these riches are the 166 species of trees, shrubs, and woody vines identified, described, and pictured in this handy guide. Expanding and updating H. A. Stephenss 1969 classic, this handbook offers full descriptions of woody plant species found in the wild in Kansas, 138 of them native. County-level distribution maps show where species have been documented, and nearly 1,000 color photographs highlight morphological featureshabit, bark, leaves, flowers, and fruit.Updated scientific nomenclature reflects our current understanding of the taxonomy of woody species, as well as the most recent findings in studies of DNA, macro- and micromorphology, cytology, ecology, and phenology. With keys for identification, additional notes about nearly 100 other native and nonnative woody plants found in the state, and a comprehensive glossary defining all technical botanical terms, this user-friendly handbook should be the go-to guide for plant enthusiasts and professionals alike.

Studying the role of the Supreme Court, this account argues that it has grown beyond its constitutional mandate since decisions made by the Court may be grounded in natural law or a ""higher law"". A more accurate and responsible view of judicial power is proposed in the discussion.

Challenges scholarly assumptions about how the Osage built an Indigenous empire due to the hunting and war prowess of Osage men. Rather, Osage society was built on gender compelmentarity, Osage men and women were both central to hunting and war success and thus the rise and fall of their empire.

Midway through 1942, Japanese and Allied forces found themselves fighting on two fronts - in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. These concurrent campaigns proved a critical turning point in the war being waged in the Pacific. Key to this shift was the Allies seizing of the strategic initiative - a concept that Sean Judge examines in this book, particularly in the context of the Pacific War.

The first study in half a century to focus on the election of 1796. Colorfully portrays the young nation's politics, focusing especially on images of Adams and Jefferson created by supporters and detractors through the press, capturing the way that ordinary citizens in 1796 would have experienced candidates they never heard speak.

From Kanorado to Pawnee villages, Kansas is a land rich in archaeological sites - nearly 12,000 known - that testify to its prehistoric heritage. This volume presents the first comprehensive overview of Kansas archaeology in nearly fifty years, containing the most current descriptions and interpretations of the state's archaeological record.

Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Book Award If the Battle of the Bulge was Germany's last gasp, it was also America's proving ground-the largest single action fought by the U.S. Army in World War II. Taking a new approach to an old story, Harold Winton widens our field of vision by showing how victory in this legendary campaign was built upon the remarkable resurrection of our truncated interwar army, an overhaul that produced the effective commanders crucial to GI success in beating back the Ardennes counteroffensive launched by Hitler's forces.Winton's is the first study of the Bulge to examine leadership at the largely neglected level of corps command. Focusing on the decisions and actions of six Army corps commandersLeonard Gerow, Troy Middleton, Matthew Ridgway, John Millikin, Manton Eddy, and J. Lawton Collinshe recreates their role in this epic struggle through a mosaic of narratives that take the commanders from the pre-war training grounds of America to the crucible of war in the icy-cold killing fields of Belgium and Luxembourg. Winton introduces the story of each phase of the Bulge with a theater-level overview of the major decisions and events that shaped the corps battles and, for the first time, fully integrates the crucial role of airpower into our understanding of how events unfolded on the ground. Unlike most accounts of the Ardennes that chronicle only the periods of German and American initiative, Winton's study describes an intervening middle phase in which the initiative was fiercely contested by both sides and the outcome uncertain. His inclusion of the principal American and German commanders adds yet another valuable layer to this rich tapestry of narrative and analysis.Ultimately, Winton argues that the flexibility of the corps structure and the competence of the men who commanded the six American corps that fought in the Bulge contributed significantly to the ultimate victory. Chronicling the human drama of commanding large numbers of soldiers in battle, he has produced an artful blend of combat narrative, collective biography, and institutional history that contributes significantly to the broader understanding of World War II as a whole. With the recent modularization of the U.S. Army division, which makes this command echelon a re-creation of the corps of World War II, Corps Commanders of the Bulge also has distinct relevance to current issues of Army transformation.

Nancy Beck Young presents a documented study of Lou Henry Hoover's White House years, 1929-1933, showing that, far from a passive prelude to Eleanor Roosevelt, she was a true innovator.

Revealing the interplay between foreign policy, domestic politics, and public opinion, the author of this book argues that 1950 was a pivotal year for the USA. The convergence of Korea, McCarthy, and the Bomb, he states, wounded the nation in ways from which it never fully recovered.

What was for the United States a struggle against creeping Communism in Southeast Asia was for the people of North Vietnam a "great patriotic war" that saw its eventual victory against a military Goliath. Victory in Vietnam is the People's Army of Vietnam's own account of two decades of struggle, now available for the first time in English.

Using memoirs and histories, letters and diaries, early photos and old maps, Susan Schrepfer compares male and female mountaineering narratives to show the ways in which gender affected what men and women found to value in rocky heights, and how their different perceptions together defined the wilderness preservation movement for the nation..

Gaspar Perez de Villagra AwardThe Dine have been a pastoral people for as long as they can remember; but when livestock reductions in the New Deal era forced many into the labor market, some scholars felt that Navajo culture would inevitably decline. Although they lost a great deal with the waning of their sheep-centered economy, Colleen O'Neill argues that Navajo culture persisted. O'Neill's book challenges the conventional notion that the introduction of market capitalism necessarily leads to the destruction of native cultural values. She shows instead that contact with new markets provided the Navajos with ways to diversify their household-based survival strategies. Through adapting to new kinds of work, Navajos actually participated in the "e;reworking of modernity"e; in their region, weaving an alternate, culturally specific history of capitalist development. O'Neill chronicles a history of Navajo labor that illuminates how cultural practices and values influenced what it meant to work for wages or to produce commodities for the marketplace. Through accounts of Navajo coal miners, weavers, and those who left the reservation in search of wage work, she explores the tension between making a living the Navajo way and "e;working elsewhere."e; Focusing on the period between the 1930s and the early 1970sa time when Navajos saw a dramatic transformation of their economyO'Neill shows that Navajo cultural values were flexible enough to accommodate economic change. She also examines the development of a Navajo working class after 1950, when corporate development of Navajo mineral resources created new sources of wage work and allowed former migrant workers to remain on the reservation. Focusing on the household rather than the workplace, O'Neill shows how the Navajo home serves as a site of cultural negotiation and a source for affirming identity. Her depiction of weaving particularly demonstrates the role of women as cultural arbitrators, providing mothers with cultural power that kept them at the center of what constituted "e;Navajo-ness."e; Ultimately, Working the Navajo Way offers a new way to think about Navajo history, shows the essential resilience of Navajo lifeways, and argues for a more dynamic understanding of Native American culture overall.

Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, Congress established the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War. The COCOW generated controversy throughout the war, and its legacy sparks debate even. In the wake of both critical and sympathetic appraisals, Bruce Tap now offers the first history of COCOW's activities, focusing on the nature of its power and its influence on military policy.

In most studies of nationalism, the United States is curiously ignored or is examined only during its colonial and republican periods. But it was the Civil War, argues Susan-Mary Grant, that truly formed the American nation by unifying the states once and for all, abolishing slavery, and setting the country on the path to modernity.

While war is most effectively waged as a united effort, the United States has consistently waged military conflict without firm central direction. Throughout our history, observes Michael Pearlman, the waging of war has been subject to continuous bargaining and compromise among competing governmental and military factions. What passes for strategy emerged from this process.

In 1940 the US Army Signal Intelligence Service broke the Japanese diplomatic code. Resurrecting Oshima Hiroshi's decoded communications, Carl Boyd provides a unique look at the Nazis from the perspective of a close foreign observer and ally. He uses Oshima's own words to reveal the thought and strategies of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis, with whom Oshima associated.

Over the course of two centuries, Americans have tried to tame the Missouri River. Writing in a new tradition of environmental history, Robert Kelley Schneiders takes a long historical view to reconstruct the Missouri Valley environment before Euro-American settlement and then trace the environmental transformations resulting from the development projects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In recent years, controversies over abortion, school prayer, and religious cults have raised new questions about the delicate balance between church and state, between true believers and civic authority. John West shows that America's Founders had already anticipated and answered such questions by carefully defining religion's proper role in politics.

Underscoring an emerging revisionist view of the American Expeditionary Forces, David Trask argues that the performances of the AEF and General John J. Pershing were much more flawed than conventional accounts have suggested. This can best be seen, he shows, by analysing coalition warfare at the level of grand tactics.