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A fighting chance
Elizabeth Warren tells the story of the two-decade journey that taught her how Washington really works and really doesn't.
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Conservative Bias
Before Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, there was Jesse Helms. From in front of a camera at WRAL-TV, Helms forged a new brand of southern conservatism long before he was a senator from North Carolina. As executive vice president of the station, Helms delivered commentaries on the evening news and directed the news and entertainment programming. He pioneered the attack on the liberal media, and his editorials were some of the first shots fired in the culture wars, criticizing the influence of \"immoral entertainment.\" Through the emerging power of the household television Helms established a blueprint and laid the foundation for the modern conservative movement.
Bryan Thrift mines over 2,700 WRAL-TV \"Viewpoint\" editorials broadcast between 1960 and 1972 to offer not only a portrait of a skilled rhetorician and wordsmith but also a lens on the way the various, and at times competing, elements of modern American conservatism cohered into an ideology couched in the language of anti-elitism and \"traditional values.\" Decades prior to the invention of the blog, Helms corresponded with his viewers to select, refine, and sharpen his political message until he had reworked southern traditionalism into a national conservative movement. The realignment of southern Democrats into the Republican Party was not easy or inevitable, and by examining Helms's oft-forgotten journalism career, Thrift shows how delicately and deliberately this transition had to be cultivated.
eBook
The political life of Bella Abzug, 1976–1998
The Political Life of Bella Abzug, 1976–1998 is the second part of the first full biography of Bella Abzug. Alan H. Levy explores the political life of one of the most important women in politics in mid- and late-twentieth-century America. This second part takes up Abzug’s life from the point in 1976 when she narrowly lost her bid for the New York Democratic Party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate. The biography follows her subsequent failed effort to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for Mayor of New York City in 1977, her leading a controversial National Women’s Convention in Houston in late 1977, her failed attempt to return to the U.S. Congress in 1978, and her conflicts with President Jimmy Carter and his administration. The biography then traces the efforts in which Abzug was engaged to regain political prominence, and her work on behalf of women at both national and international levels. Through the events in Abzug’s life, Levy explores tensions that surrounded the contrasts between political principles, which idealized a world in which gender posed no barriers to any human effort, and political views, which sought to extol and develop notions of gender and of ideas about its special meanings in human affairs and politics.
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The women of the 116th Congress : portraits of power
\"A celebration of the history-making women of the 116th Congress, who stand as a testament to what power looks and sounds like in 2019. The first woman Speaker of the House. The first female combat veteran. The first Native American women. The first Muslim women. The first openly gay member of the Senate. These are just some of the remarkable firsts represented by the women of the 116th Congress, the most diverse and inclusive in American history. Just over a century ago, Jeannette Rankin of Montana won a seat in the House of Representatives, becoming the first woman ever elected to federal office. In 1917, 128 years after the first United States Congress convened, she was sworn into its 65th session. One hundred and two years later, one has become 131--the number of women serving in both chambers of the 116th Congress as of 2019. For most of recorded American history, political power has looked a certain way. But the 2018 midterm elections brought a seismic change. This book, a collaboration between New York Times photo editors Beth Flynn and Marisa Schwartz Taylor and photographers Elizabeth D. Herman and Celeste Sloman, documents the women of the 116th Congress, photographed in the style of historical portrait paintings commonly seen in the halls of power to highlight the stark difference between how we've historically viewed governance and how it has evolved. The Women of the 116th Congress features an illustrated timeline and list of firsts for women in Congress as well as \"Her Vote, Her Voice\" sections throughout that highlight historical moments in female politics. To provide more context around the origin of the photography, there is also an \"Inside the Times\" piece about how this project came about and was then turned into a book. Opening with an extended introduction and foreword by writer Roxane Gay and concluding with a removable poster featuring the congresswomen's portraits, this book profoundly captures the importance of this moment in history and will be a keepsake for years to come. The Women of the 116th Congress is a testament to what representation in the United States looks and sounds like in 2019--and the possibilities of what it may look like in the years to come.\"--provided by publisher.
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Mary Norton of New Jersey
Mary Norton of New Jersey: Congressional Trailblazer tells the compelling story of Mary Norton, who served in the United States House of Representatives for 13 terms from 1925 to 1951, featuring her significant role as a congressional pioneer for women and American workers. The daughter of Irish immigrants, Norton grew up in a Roman Catholic, working-class family and was prodded to enter politics by Jersey City mayor Frank Hague. One of the first five women elected to the United States Congress, she cut a fresh path for women of ordinary means as the first female elected to the House from the Democratic Party, an eastern state, or urban center east of the Mississippi River. Norton’s political career paralleled mayor Hague’s tight control of Jersey City and president Franklin Roosevelt’s national leadership during the Depression and World War II. Norton’s connection with Hague’s Jersey City Democratic Party political machine clouded her career, but Hague seldom tried to influence her legislative behavior. Norton, the first woman to chair four House committees including a major committee, consistently supported legislation helping economically disadvantaged Americans and encouraged women to enter politics. At the helm of the District of Columbia Committee from 1931 to 1937, she served as unofficial mayor of Washington, D.C. and helped enact long-needed political, economic, and social legislation for its citizens. Her most valuable work came as head of the powerful Labor Committee from 1937 to 1947. Norton helped secure House passage of the landmark Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, establishing a national minimum hourly wage and maximum workweek. She sought to improve working conditions for America’s newly industrialized workers and defended the Wagner Act of 1935, allowing employees to bargain collectively for the value of their work. Norton also helped secure federal funding for several Hudson County projects benefitting her Irish, Roman Catholic, working-class constituents. The expansion of mayor Hague’s gargantuan Medical Center Complex and the construction of Roosevelt Stadium provided numerous jobs for unemployed Hudson County residents. Norton, who never lost an election and was reelected by decisive margins, was the first woman elected as a freeholder in New Jersey and to direct a state Democratic Party.
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Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy
Long before movie stars Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger became governors of California, a popular radio personality with no previous political experience—who wasn't even registered to vote—swept into the governor's office of Texas. W. Lee \"Pappy\" O'Daniel was a 1930s businessman who discovered the power of radio to sell flour. His musical shows with the Light Crust Doughboys (which launched the career of Bob Wills) and his radio homilies extolling family and Christian values found a vast, enthusiastic audience in Depression-era Texas. When Pappy decided to run for governor in 1938 as a way to sell more flour—a fact he proudly proclaimed throughout the campaign—the people of Texas voted for him in record numbers. And despite the ineptitude for politics he displayed once in office, Texans returned him to the governorship in 1940 and then elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1941 in a special election in which he defeated Lyndon Johnson, as well as to a full term as senator in 1942. While the hit film O Brother, Where Art Thou? celebrated a fictional \"Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy\" O'Daniel, this book captures the essence of the real man through photographs taken by employees of the Texas Department of Public Safety, most of which are previously unpublished. Reminiscent of the work of WPA photographers such as Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange, these photos record the last unscripted era of politics when a charismatic candidate could still address a crowd from an unpainted front porch or a mobile bandstand in the back of a truck. They strikingly confirm that Pappy O'Daniel's ability to connect with people was as great in person as on the radio. To set the photos in context, Bill Crawford has written an entertaining text that discusses the political landscape in Texas and the United States in the 1930s, as well as the rise of radio as mass medium for advertising and entertainment. He also provides extensive captions for each picture. John Anderson, Photo Archivist of the Texas State Archives, discusses the work of Joel Tisdale and the other DPS photographers who left this extraordinary record of the greatest vote-getter in Texas history, who became one of America's first celebrities to cross the line from entertainment to political office.
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Patsy Mink
How did Patsy Mink become a member of Congress? Readers will learn all about this great Asian American politician and the significant events in her life in this low-leveled biography.
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Shirley Chisholm
A staunch proponent of breaking down racial and gender barriers, Shirley Chisholm had the esteemed privilege of being a pioneer in many aspects of her life. She was the first African American woman from Brooklyn elected to the New York State legislature and the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1968. She also made a run for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972. Focusing on Chisholm's lifelong advocacy for fair treatment, access to education, and equal pay for all American minority groups, this book explores the life of a remarkable woman in the context of twentieth-century urban America and the tremendous social upheaval that occurred after World War II.
About the Lives of American Women series: Selected and edited by renowned women's historian Carol Berkin, these brief biographies are designed for use in undergraduate courses. Rather than a comprehensive approach, each biography focuses instead on a particular aspect of a woman's life that is emblematic of her time, or which made her a pivotal figure in the era. The emphasis is on a 'good read', featuring accessible writing and compelling narratives, without sacrificing sound scholarship and academic integrity. Primary sources at the end of each biography reveal the subject's perspective in her own words. Study questions and an annotated bibliography support the student reader.
Introduction 1. Barbados 2. Brooklyn 3. All Politics is Local 4. Black Power 5. New York State Assemblywoman 6. I Am Woman 7. An Unquiet Congresswoman 8. Testing the Presidential Waters 9. On the Chisholm Trail 10. Political and Personal Transformations 11. Conclusion
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