Presidents have played a major role in shaping the Sunshine State, whether waging wars, protecting the environment, seeking votes, or just attracting media attention to tourist attractions. "Presidents and Florida" covers it all, from fighting Indians to Ohanging chads.

U.S. Presidents have played a major role in shaping Florida, whether waging wars, protecting the environment, seeking votes, or just drawing media attention to the state's attractions. Thomas Jefferson set out to buy Florida, but ended up making the Louisiana Purchase instead. Andrew Jackson came to fight Indians when La Florida was still a Spanish colony and then became the first territorial governor. Abraham Lincoln came up with the plan to get Florida back into the Union in 1864 to help his reelection chances. Ulysses S. Grant came to promote steamships on the St. Johns River. Warren G. Harding played golf with an elephant as a caddie, and Chester Arthur went fishing in Orlando. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders sailed to glory from Tampa, but nearly missed the boat. Herbert Hoover came to Florida to spend time with his friends, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone, and held the Florida record for catching the largest bonefish. Days before his inauguration, an assassination attempt was made on Franklin Roosevelt as he spoke in a Miami park. Roosevelt's yacht was anchored at Fort Lauderdale when a massive hurricane swept it inland. Roosevelt tried to sell it as a hunting lodge. Harry Truman launched a campaign to defeat a Florida Senator, and had a house in Key West called the Little White House. Nixon killed the Cross Florida Barge Canal, becoming a hero to environmentalists. After winning election, he purchased a home in Florida and was there during the Watergate burglary. George W. Bush launched his political career in Florida, working for a successful Senate candidate. And of course it was the contested Florida vote, with its "hanging-chad" ballots, that gave him reelection in 2000. Learn about all of these men and more in this unique take on Florida history.

How the American executive office was constructed in the Constitution and implemented by the first presidents This volume examines the political ideas behind the construction of the presidency in the U.S. Constitution, as well as how these ideas were implemented by the nation's early presidents. The framers of the Constitution disagreed about the scope of the new executive role they were creating, and this volume reveals the ways the duties and power of the office developed contrary to many expectations. Here, leading scholars of the early republic examine principles from European thought and culture that were key to establishing the conceptual language and institutional parameters for the American executive office. Unpacking the debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, these essays describe how the Constitution left room for the first presidents to set patterns of behavior and establish a range of duties to make the office functional within a governmental system of checks and balances. Contributors explore how these presidents understood their positions and fleshed out their full responsibilities according to the everyday operations required to succeed. As disputes continue to surround the limits of executive power today, this volume helps identify and explain the circumstances in which limits can be imposed on presidents who seem to dangerously exceed the constitutional parameters of their office. Political Thought and the Origins of the American Presidency demonstrates that this distinctive, time-tested role developed from a fraught, historically contingent, and contested process. Contributors: Claire Rydell Arcenas Lindsay M. Chervinsky François Furstenberg Jonathan Gienapp Daniel J. Hulsebosch Ben Lowe Max Skjönsberg Eric Slauter Caroline Winterer Blair Worden Rosemarie Zagarri A volume in the Alan B. and Charna Larkin Series on the American Presidency

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An insightful and moving collection of fifty-two Biblical meditations from former President Jimmy Carter “For me, the ancient texts always come alive when I explore them with a searching heart. I hope they will be for you, as they have been for me, sources of strength.”—Jimmy Carter, from the Preface Former President Jimmy Carter has won the respect and affection of millions for his long career as a humanitarian, a peacemaker, and a model of faith in action. The Sunday school classes he led at his hometown church in Plains, Georgia, were legendary. “These weekly sessions . . . are remarkable for the ability of regular folks to walk in, grab a seat, and exchange views with the thirty-ninth president of the United States,” says The New York Times. “But they are also remarkable for what Mr. Carter has to say.” For Sources of Strength, President Carter has curated fifty-two of his favorite Bible lessons—one for each week of the year—from the fifteen hundred or so he taught over the decades. A thoughtful and inspiring book, Sources of Strength captured the heart of the country and can be enjoyed on its own or as a companion to Carter’s bestselling spiritual autobiography, Living Faith.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Georgia forty-one times between 1924 and 1945. This rich gathering of photographs and remembrances documents the vital role of Georgia’s people and places in FDR’s rise from his position as a despairing politician daunted by disease to his role as a revered leader who guided the country through its worst depression and a world war. A native New Yorker, FDR called Georgia his “other state.” Seeking relief from the devastating effects of polio, he was first drawn there by the reputed healing powers of the waters at Warm Springs. FDR immediately took to Georgia, and the attraction was mutual. Nearly two hundred photos show him working and convalescing at the Little White House, addressing crowds, sparring with reporters, visiting fellow polio patients, and touring the countryside. Quotes by Georgians from a variety of backgrounds hint at the countless lives he touched during his time in the state. In Georgia, away from the limelight, FDR became skilled at projecting strength while masking polio’s symptoms. Georgia was also his social laboratory, where he floated new ideas to the press and populace and tested economic recovery projects that were later rolled out nationally. Most important, FDR learned to love and respect common Americans—beginning with the farmers, teachers, maids, railroad workers, and others he met in Georgia.

“[A] wide-ranging and nuanced group portrait of the Founding Fathers” by a Pulitzer Prize winner (The New Yorker). In the early 1770s, the men who invented America were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of the New World, devoted to family and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. None set out to become “revolutionary.” But when events in Boston escalated, they found themselves thrust into a crisis that moved quickly from protest to war. In Revolutionaries, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers—how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker. From the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation. We see the founders before they were fully formed leaders, as ordinary men who became extraordinary, altered by history. “[An] eminently readable account of the men who led the Revolution, wrote the Constitution and persuaded the citizens of the thirteen original states to adopt it.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Superb . . . a distinctive, fresh retelling of this epochal tale . . . Men like John Dickinson, George Mason, and Henry and John Laurens, rarely leading characters in similar works, put in strong appearances here. But the focus is on the big five: Washington, Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton. Everyone interested in the founding of the U.S. will want to read this book.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

The first book-length assessment of Coolidge's presidency in thirty years draws on the recently opened papers of his White House physician for hitherto unknown personal information. Ferrell (history, Indiana U.) exonerates Coolidge for the failures of his party's foreign policy, but holds him accountable for having had insufficient economic savvy to warn Wall Street against the overspeculation that caused the Depression. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR