During John William Ward’s time as president of Amherst College, he dealt with issues of gender and sexuality through the integration of women into a traditionally masculine culture, as well as issues of race, generational differences, a growing student dissatisfaction with American intervention in Vietnam, and the difference between academic theory and action. Like the examination of any college president’s tenure, an examination of Ward’s is an examination of the relationships between the college administration and the students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

This first-ever biography of John William Ward, the fourteenth president of Amherst College, explores the roots of his idealism and covers his presidency, his later success in Massachusetts politics, and the events leading up to his eventual suicide. President from 1971 to 1979, Ward served during a tumultuous period in the history of the elite liberal arts college, and in the history of the nation. He presided over the once all-male college's transition to coeducation, worked to support African-American students in their fight for equality and justice, and was arrested for civil disobedience in protest against the Vietnam War. Ward was emblematic of his time. Idealist that he was, he tried to make Amherst College a model of a democratic society. Defeated in ugly battles with the faculty, Ward resigned as president but went on to great success in the rougher world of Massachusetts politics. He made headlines for his leadership of a state commission that spent more than two years investigating corruption in the awarding of building contracts, resulting in the passage of laws that guaranteed reforms. This long-overdue volume is the first complete study of Ward--a self-made man, proof that the American Dream could come true, but who ultimately saw his personal and professional life collapse. It sheds light on Amherst College, on higher education more broadly, on suicide, and on the United States in the 1960s and '70s.

In office less than half a year, President George Washington undertook an arduous month-long tour of New England to promote his new government and to dispel fears of monarchy. More than two hundred years later, American presidents still regularly traverse the country to advance their political goals and demonstrate their connection to the people. In this first book-length study of the history of presidential travel, Richard Ellis explores how travel has reflected and shaped the changing relationship between American presidents and the American people. Tracing the evolution of the president from First Citizen to First Celebrity, he spins a lively narrative that details what happens when our leaders hit the road to meet the people. Presidents, Ellis shows, have long placed travel at the service of politics: Rutherford "the Rover" Hayes visited thirty states and six territories and was the first president to reach the Pacific, while William Howard Taft logged an average of 30,000 rail miles a year. Unearthing previously untold stories of our peripatetic presidents, Ellis also reveals when the public started paying for presidential travel, why nineteenth-century presidents never left the country, and why earlier presidents-such as Andrew Jackson, once punched in the nose on a riverboat-journeyed without protection. Ellis marks the fine line between accessibility and safety, from John Quincy Adams skinny-dipping in the Potomac to George W. clearing brush in Crawford. Particularly important, Ellis notes, is the advent of air travel. While presidents now travel more widely, they have paradoxically become more remote from the people, as Air Force One flies over towns through which presidential trains once rumbled to rousing cheers. Designed to close the gap between president and people, travel now dramatizes the distance that separates the president from the people and reinforces the image of a regal presidency. As entertaining as it is informative, Ellis's book is a sprightly account that takes readers along on presidential jaunts through the years as our leaders press flesh and kiss babies, ride carriages and trains, plot strategies on board ships and planes, and try to connect with the citizens they represent.

Entertaining, fast-paced, instructional, The Change Maker is not only a memoir, but a blueprint for how we can change our own lives, as well as the world around us, by providing personal lessons in the values of strategic thinking and responsible leadership. Through compelling true stories, both humorous and serious, Al Checchi demonstrates that through experience, vision, and courage, one person can make a difference and lead others to move beyond their comfort zones and transform our institutions. Al Checchi, a remarkable change maker, chronicles how his creativity, strategic thinking, and negotiating skills helped transform three major American institutions—Marriott Corporation, Walt Disney, and Northwest Airlines—and led him to challenge the California political establishment as a candidate for governor. Peppered with excerpts from speeches and articles, The Change Maker offers thoughtful perspective on institutional change in America since the 1960s, and scalding commentary on the current state of our public and private institutions, political parties, the emergent political class, and the economic policies and leadership of today’s administration. The Change Maker challenges us to confront the status quo and demand accountability and a restoration of the fiduciary standards that are so vital to reclaiming and maintaining America's position of economic and political leadership. Readers will finish the book feeling revitalized, hopeful, and armed with new ideas on how change can, and always will, occur.

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Amherst College, a group of scholars and alumni explore the school's substantial past in this volume. Amherst in the World tells the story of how an institution that was founded to train Protestant ministers began educating new generations of industrialists, bankers, and political leaders with the decline in missionary ambitions after the Civil War. The contributors trace how what was a largely white school throughout the interwar years begins diversifying its student demographics after World War II and the War in Vietnam. The histories told here illuminate how Amherst has contended with slavery, wars, religion, coeducation, science, curriculum, town and gown relations, governance, and funding during its two centuries of existence. Through Amherst's engagement with educational improvement in light of these historical undulations, it continually affirms both the vitality and the utility of a liberal arts education. Contributions by Martha Saxton, Gary J. Kornblith, David W. Wills, Frederick E. Hoxie, Trent Maxey, Nicholas L. Syrett, Wendy H. Bergoffen, Rick López, Matthew Alexander Randolph, Daniel Levinson Wilk, K. Ian Shin, David S. Reynolds, Jane F. Thrailkill, Julie Dobrow, Richard F. Teichgraeber III, Debby Applegate, Michael E. Jirik, Bruce Laurie, Molly Michelmore, and Christian G. Appy.

A groundbreaking history of how elite colleges and universities in America and Britain finally went coed As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time. Coeducation met with fierce resistance. As one alumnus put it in a letter to his alma mater, "Keep the damned women out." Focusing on the complexities of institutional decision making, this book tells the story of this momentous era in higher education—revealing how coeducation was achieved not by organized efforts of women activists, but through strategic decisions made by powerful men. In America, Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth began to admit women; in Britain, several of the men's colleges at Cambridge and Oxford did the same. What prompted such fundamental change? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of such strong opposition? How well was it implemented? Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains that elite institutions embarked on coeducation not as a moral imperative but as a self-interested means of maintaining a first-rate applicant pool. She explores the challenges of planning for the academic and non-academic lives of newly admitted women, and shows how, with the exception of Mary Ingraham Bunting at Radcliffe, every decision maker leading the charge for coeducation was male. Drawing on unprecedented archival research, “Keep the Damned Women Out” is a breathtaking work of scholarship that is certain to be the definitive book on the subject.