In this close, personal history, the result of eight years of intensive research, Reed finds Faubus to be an opaque man, "an insoluable mixture of cynicism and compassion, guile and grace, wickedness and goodness," and, ultimately, "one of the last Americans to perceive politics as a grand game." New York Times Book Review Notable Book for 1997 1998 Certificate of Commendation, American Association for State and Local History

A historical account of the efforts of nine African-American students to integrate Central High School draws on interviews to offer insight into the behind-the-scenes experiences of the students and members of their community.

H. R. Haldeman, President Nixon's former chief of staff, is said to have boasted: "Every president needs a son of a bitch, and I'm Nixon's. I'm his buffer and I'm his bastard. I get done what he wants done and I take the heat instead of him." Richard Ellis explores the widely discussed but poorly understood phenomenon of presidential "lightning rods"-cabinet officials who "take the heat" instead of their bosses. Whether by intent or circumstance, these officials divert criticism and blame away from their presidents. The phenomenon is so common that it's assumed to be an essential item in every president's managerial toolbox. But, Ellis argues, such assumptions can oversimplify our understanding of this tool. Ellis advises against indiscriminate use of the lightning rod metaphor. Such labeling can hide as much as it reveals about presidential administration and policymaking at the cabinet level. The metaphor often misleads by suggesting strategic intent on the president's part while obscuring the calculations and objectives of presidential adversaries and the lightning rods themselves. Ellis also illuminates the opportunities and difficulties that various presidential posts-especially secretaries of state, chiefs of staff, and vice presidents-have offered for deflecting blame from our presidents. His study offers numerous detailed and instructive examples from the administrations of Truman (Dean Acheson); Eisenhower (Richard Nixon, John Foster Dulles, Herbert Brownell, and Ezra Taft Benson); LBJ (Hubert Humphrey); Ford (Henry Kissinger); and Reagan (James Watt). These examples, Ellis suggests, should guide our understanding of the relationship between lightning rods and presidential leadership, policymaking, and ratings. Blame avoidance, he warns, does have its limitations and may even backfire at times. Nevertheless, President Clinton and his successors may need to rely on such tools. The presidency, Ellis points out, finds itself the object of increasingly intense partisan debate and microscopic scrutiny by a wary press. Lightning rods can deflect such heat and help the president test policies, gauge public opinion, and protect his political power and public image. Ellis's book is an essential primer for helping us understand this process.

Stephen E. Ambrose draws upon extensive sources, an unprecedented degree of scholarship, and numerous interviews with Dwight D. Eisenhower himself to offer the fullest, richest, and most objective rendering yet of the soldier who became president. Eisenhower: The President, the second and concluding volume of Stephen Ambrose's brilliant biography, is the first assessment of a postwar President based on access to the entire record. It covers a wide range of subjects, including Eisenhower's rejection of the near-unanimous advice he received as President to use atomic weapons; his thinking on defense policy and the Cold War; his handling of a multitude of foreign-affairs crises; his attitudes and actions on civil rights; his views on Joseph McCarthy and on communism. Also illuminated are Eisenhower's relations with Nixon, Truman, Khrushchev, de Gaulle, and other world leaders. Ambrose provides us with an extraordinary portrait—fairminded and enormously well-informed—of the man, both decent and complex, who is increasingly regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest Presidents.

In 1970, four racially moderate Democrats won governors' seats in the American South -- Dale Bumpers in Arkansas, Reubin Askew in Florida, John West in South Carolina, and Jimmy Carter in Georgia. In Mighty Peculiar Elections, Randy Sanders explores these campaigns and shows that while each reflected aspects of its state's unique history and political idiosyncrasies, taken together, they signaled changes in attitudes and the politics of race in the South as well as the nation as a whole. Most southerners by 1970 had come to realize the futility of overt opposition to federal civil rights policies and no longer wanted to hear political candidates singing the refrains of white supremacy. Bumpers won Arkansas's Democratic primary over former Governor Orval Faubus, who had symbolized southern intransigence since 1957, when he ordered the state militia to prevent school integration at Central High School in Little Rock. Askew defeated Florida's Republican incumbent governor, Claude Kirk, who seized a school district during the campaign in order to thwart a court-ordered school desegregation plan. Similarly, West ran against Republican Albert Watson, who spewed fiery anti-integration rhetoric, and Carter succeeded Lester Maddox, who had established and maintained his hard-line segregationist reputation by autographing ax handles, mementos of the weapon he used years earlier to prevent blacks from entering his restaurant. None of the victors in 1970 talked much about civil rights during their campaigns; they all downplayed, evaded, or finessed racial issues when those topics arose.Sanders describes how the successful candidates carefully shaped their campaigns, rejecting the rhetoric of resistance without uttering strong words in favor of desegregation. A shared campaign strategy of "new populism" emerged among these candidates -- a strategy that promoted the interests of common folk, but relied primarily on image and style rather than issues to attract support. The candidates also perceived the diminishing power of party loyalty, political machines, and power brokers that controlled large groups of voters, and began to appeal directly to the electorate through television, employing effective strategies that emphasized their best qualities. The cool images of reasoned calm played well on television and prevailed over the hot pictures of frenzied defiance. Using archival materials, media records, personal papers, and interviews, Sanders shows that although these elections did not mark a total transformation of southern politics, they did suggest a subtle shift in the balance of power away from those who continued to roar the rhetoric of racism and resistance towards those who espoused a more moderate position. By focusing on one moment in a period of great political change, Mighty Peculiar Elections shines a spotlight on the evolving racial attitudes of the New South.

Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, is perhaps the most important living American author. This work examines Morrison's life and writing, featuring critical analyses of her work and themes, as well as entries on related topics and relevant people, places, and influences.