The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the most powerful partisan figure in the contemporary U.S. Congress. How this came to be, and how the majority party in the House has made control of the speakership a routine matter, is far from straightforward. Fighting for the Speakership provides a comprehensive history of how Speakers have been elected in the U.S. House since 1789, arguing that the organizational politics of these elections were critical to the construction of mass political parties in America and laid the groundwork for the role they play in setting the agenda of Congress today. Jeffery Jenkins and Charles Stewart show how the speakership began as a relatively weak office, and how votes for Speaker prior to the Civil War often favored regional interests over party loyalty. While struggle, contention, and deadlock over House organization were common in the antebellum era, such instability vanished with the outbreak of war, as the majority party became an "organizational cartel" capable of controlling with certainty the selection of the Speaker and other key House officers. This organizational cartel has survived Gilded Age partisan strife, Progressive Era challenge, and conservative coalition politics to guide speakership elections through the present day. Fighting for the Speakership reveals how struggles over House organization prior to the Civil War were among the most consequential turning points in American political history.

When the Democrats retook control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2007 after twelve years in the wilderness, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman speaker in American history. In Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics, Ron Peters, one of America's leading scholars of Congress, and Cindy Simon Rosenthal, one of America's leading scholars on women and political leadership, provide a comprehensive account of how Pelosi became speaker and what this tells us about Congress in the twenty-first century. They consider the key issues that Pelosi's rise presents for American politics, highlight the core themes that have shaped, and continue to shape, her remarkable caree, and discuss the challenges that women face in the male-dominated world of American politics, particularly at its highest levels. The authors also shed light on Pelosi's political background: first as the scion of a powerful Baltimore political family whose power base lay in East Coast urban ethnic politics, and later as a successful politician in what is probably the most liberal city in the country, San Francisco. Peters and Rosenthal trace how she built her base within the House Democratic Caucus and ultimately consolidated enough power to win the Speakership. They show how twelve years out of power allowed her to fashion a new image for House Democrats, and they conclude with an analysis of her institutional leadership style. The only full-length portrait of Nancy Pelosi in print, this superb volume offers a vivid and insightful analysis of one of America's most remarkable politicians.

Matthew N. Green provides the first comprehensive analysis of how the Speaker of the House has exercised legislative leadership from 1940 to the present. Green finds that the Speaker’s party loyalty is tempered by a host of competing objectives, including reelection, passage of desired public policy laws, handling the interests of the president, and meeting the demands of the House as a whole.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The definitive biography of Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American political history, written by New York Times bestselling author and USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page. Featuring more than 150 exclusive interviews with those who know her best—and a series of in-depth, news-making interviews with Pelosi herself—MADAM SPEAKER is unprecedented in the scope of its exploration of Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable life and of her indelible impact on American politics. Before she was Nancy Pelosi, she was Nancy D’Alesandro. Her father was a big-city mayor and her mother his political organizer; when she encour­aged her young daughter to become a nun, Nancy told her mother that being a priest sounded more appealing. She didn’t begin running for office until she was forty-six years old, her five children mostly out of the nest. With that, she found her calling. Nancy Pelosi has lived on the cutting edge of the revolution in both women’s roles and in the nation’s movement to a fiercer and more polarized politics. She has established herself as a crucial friend or for­midable foe to U.S. presidents, a master legislator, and an indefatigable political warrior. She took on the Democratic establishment to become the first female Speaker of the House, then battled rivals on the left and right to consolidate her power. She has soared in the sharp-edged inside game of politics, though she has struggled in the outside game—demonized by conservatives, second-guessed by progressives, and routinely underestimated by nearly everyone. All of this was preparation for the most historic challenge she would ever face, at a time she had been privately planning her retirement. When Donald Trump was elected to the White House, Nancy Pelosi became the Democratic counterpart best able to stand up to the disruptive president and to get under his skin. The battle between Trump and Pelosi, chronicled in this book with behind-the-scenes details and revelations, stands to be the titanic political struggle of our time.

How would you describe your walk with God? Fresh and passionate? Vibrant and full of life? Stagnant? Nonexistent? No matter where you are on your walk, that's exactly where God promises to meet you--even if it's messy. Sharing his own story of spiritual drifting, popular online pastor Rashawn Copeland encourages you to accept yourself as a glorious work in progress, a beloved child in whom God delights, a person on the brink of revival. Anchoring everything in Scripture, he shows you how to start your walk with God now, even in the midst of your mess. Even in the midst of addiction, doubt, depression, fear, and years spent running from God, he shows it is possible to - find God's love and acceptance - develop strong character - choose to rejoice - move out of your mess - see life through God's eyes - be a loving person in a hateful world - never settle for less than God's best - and more The change you long to see in the world starts in your own heart. Thankfully, that's exactly where God is waiting for you.

Do you have a message you want to get out into the world? Have you ever dreamed of speaking for a living? Is there something you have to say but just aren't sure what to do next? The Successful Speaker is a proven, easy-to-follow guide to helping you do just that. Whether you want to speak at your next board meeting or community gathering, start making some extra money on the side, or become a full-time professional speaker, Grant Baldwin knows how to get you from here to there. Why? Because he's done it himself and has coached over 2,000 speakers. In The Successful Speaker, you will learn the five-step road map to start and scale a speaking business from the ground up, including: - How to hone your message and know exactly who it's for - The preparation process to help your next speech move an audience to action - What it takes to establish yourself as an in-demand expert - Practical steps to finding and booking paid speaking gigs - How to know when it's time to grow your impact and income In each chapter, you will get specific action steps and case studies from professional speakers (including some of the most successful communicators in the world) to put you on the fast track to booking gigs, getting paid, and building your speaking platform.

This volume explores the role of the Speaker and the Lord Chancellor in the Westminster Parliament before the advent of democracy, setting it beside the practice at Dublin and Edinburgh over the same period, and the more recent history of the role at London and Washington. First in-depth study since the mid-1960s of how Speakers and the Speakership have operated in Parliament in Britain Includes contribution by the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Baroness Boothroyd, describing her own tenure of the Speakership Covers practice at Westminster and at Dublin and Edinburgh, and a comparison of Speakers at Westminster and Washington during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Composed of papers from a conference held at the House of Commons in April 2008