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A collection of anecdotes which provide insight into life on the presidential campaign trail, looking at American presidential elections from Washington through to Clinton. Originally published in 1984 and now updated to include the 1988 and 1992 campaigns.
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By K.A.Goldberg (Chicago)
This is a readable and informative history of Presidential politics. Devoting one chapter to each election since 1789 (George Washington), author Paul Boller provides a crisp overview, followed by a host of trivial facts and tidbits. Readers get a good view of U.S. poltiical history, personalities like Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, William Jennings Bryan, etc., and key issues such as slavery, railroads, robber barons, war, peace, communism, etc. Some readers may be surprised to learn that half-truths and mud-slinging are nothing new - Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both accused of being enemy spies, Grover Cleveland's illegitimate son was campaign fodder, and charges that the Pope would soon rule the USA came with candidacies of Catholics Al Smith (1928) and John F. Kennedy (1960).
I gave just four stars due to a couple factual errors (e.g., Martin Luther King was killed April 4, not April 27 1968), and readers may prefer the updated version - this one finishes with 1984. Still, this is fun, informative reading.
By William Hare (Seattle, Washington)
Paul F. Boller Jr. turned in a milestone effort with "Presidential Campaigns," combining an excellently developed historian's eye along with an objective presentation.
This informative work reads like an entertaining novel while providing all kinds of fascinating information about America's presidential campaigns from Washington to the present, from which we can learn so much about our nation's history, using famous elections as an evolutionary guide to understanding the peaks and valleys of the Ameican experience.
In that some of the subject matter is about heavy topics such as war and peace, domestic political conflict, and America during economic panics and depressions, Boller's humor is needed to lighten the heaviness and he delivers superbly. This is understandable since much of his career as an author involves books of anecdotes regarding American and British history as well as Hollywood's film world.
This is a book that crisply and entertainingly tells us so much about America, as revealed through its presidential compaigns.
By Matherson (New York)
This classic chronicle of Presidential campaigns, from the get-go to contemporary times, has the unusual virtue of being useful either as a collection of short readable chapters - each just the right size for a daily bus or train ride - or as a reference source. Reading this in the wake of Monicagate and the Florida Recount, it's instructive to read the history of Grover Cleveland, who seems to have features of BOTH past Democratic candidates. Like Clinton, he had his scandals - fathering an illegitimate child. Like Gore, his career was rudely interrupted by an election which he won on popular votes but lost, in a hotly contested, knife-edge electoral college tally.
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This is a well organized book full of useful facts that show how our political history has evolved over the years. Full of antdotes and trivia, the book reveals quite a bit about America. Very well condenced stories of each election. Reports things as historical facts rather than a political leaning (except for the 1988 race maybe). Overall a very good read.
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