Books in the American Presidential Elections series

When John Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he also won the right to put his own spin on the victory - whether as an underdog's heroic triumph or a liberal crusader's overcoming special interests. The author cuts through the mythology of this famous election to explain the nuts-and-bolts operations of the campaign.

Offers a study of the 1980 American election and shows why it was a landmark election. Beginning with Carter's speech on July 15, 1979, the book introduces the field of candidates, follows their campaigns, identifies the turning points and winning strategies, and assesses the results, including the GOP's first Senate majority in 26 years.

To look at the partisan polarization that paralyzes Washington today is to see what first took shape with the presidential election of 1968. This book explains why. Urban riots and the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the politics of outrage and raceall pointed to a reordering of party coalitions, of groups and regions, a hardening and widening of an ideological divideand to the historical importance of the 1968 election as a watershed event. Resilient America captures this extraordinary time in all its dramathe personalities, the politics, the parties, the events and the circumstances, from the shadow of 1964 through the primaries to the general election that pitted Richard Nixon against Hubert Humphrey, with George Wallace and Eugene McCarthy as the interlopers. Where most accounts of this pivotal yearand the decade that followedemphasize the coming apart of the nation, this book focuses on the fact that because of measures taken after the election the country actually held together. An esteemed scholar of the American presidency, Michael Nelson turns our attention to how, in spite of increasing (and increasingly vehement) differences, the parties of the time managed to make divided government work. Conventional political processespeaceful demonstrations, congressional legislation, executive initiatives, Supreme Court decisions, party reforms, and presidential politicswere flexible enough to absorb most of the dissent that tore America deeply in 1968 and might otherwise have torn it apart. This fraught time, as Nelson's work clearly demonstrates, produced unity as well as results well worth noting in our current predicament.

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.