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An entirely revised and updated edition of the best-selling 2001 original This collection of biographical essays, written by thirty-four noted historians and political scientists, chronicles the times, careers, challenges, leadership, and legacies of the fifty-seven men and one woman who have served as the state's highest elected official. The book is organized chronologically into six sections that cover Alabama’s years as a US territory and its early statehood, the 1840s through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the late nineteenth-century Bourbon era, twentieth-century progressive and wartime governors, the Civil Rights era and George Wallace’s period of influence, and recent chief executives in the post-Wallace era. The political careers of these fifty-eight individuals reflect the story of Alabama itself. Taken together, these essays provide a unified history of the state, with its recurring themes of race, federal-state relations, tensions between north and south Alabama, economic development, taxation, and education. Alabama Governors expertly delineates the decisions and challenges of the chief executives, their policy initiatives, their accomplishments and failures, and the lasting impact of their terms. The book also includes the true and sometimes scandalous anecdotes that pepper Alabama’s storied history. Several of the state's early governors fought duels; one killed his wife's lover. A Reconstruction era-governor barricaded himself in his office and refused to give it up when voters failed to reelect him. A twentieth-century governor, an alumnus of Yale, served as an officer in the Ku Klux Klan. This entirely updated and revised edition includes enlarged and enhanced images of each governor. Published as Alabama prepares for its sixty-fourth gubernatorial election, Alabama Governors is certain to become a valuable resource for teachers, students, librarians, journalists, and anyone interested in the colorful history of Alabama politics.

When Dr. Robert Bentley became the fourth Republican governor in the modern era, it was the first time since the Reconstruction era of the 1860s that the state’s Republican Party held the governor’s chair and also a majority of seats in the state’s legislature and on its supreme court. Bentley, an improbable candidate, campaigned for governor as Dr. Bentley: a selfless, thoughtful diagnostician with a likable bedside manner. During his first years in office, he might have been better served if he had been more of a politician: at ease with confrontation, clear purposed, and decisive. Robert Julian Bentley was

In July 1972 after several weeks in a Maryland hospital, George Wallace was recovered enough from the would-be assassin’s gunshot wounds to attend the Democratic National Convention in Miami. Rather than fly directly to Florida, Governor Wallace ordered his plane to land for mere minutes on a strip at the Montgomery airport. He was on a mission. In accord with the state’s constitution, Lieutenant Governor Jere Locke Beasley had become acting governor of Alabama for a five-week period because of Wallace’s long absence from the state. By touching down, Wallace regained the governorship. Beasley’s brief service as chief of state

Don Eugene Siegelman served as Alabama’s secretary of state, attorney general, and lieutenant governor before becoming governor, the only person in the state’s history to hold more than two of these offices. Touted as the state’s first “New South” governor, he focused his campaign rhetoric on endorsing a lottery to raise money for education, and he avoided the racial and religious questions that Alabama politicians traditionally used to stir the electorate. He won a landslide victory in 1998, becoming the first Democratic governor elected since 1982. Sadly, the promise Siegelman brought to state government was never matched by performance, and