Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Hardcover – 5 Nov. 2013
Amazon Price | New from | Used from |
Kindle Edition
"Please retry" | — | — |
Audible Audiobooks, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
£1.00
|
Hardcover, Large Print
"Please retry" | £50.92 | £15.80 |
Hardcover, 5 Nov. 2013 |
—
| — | £2.85 |
Audio CD, Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" | £77.52 | £63.99 |
Winner of the Carnegie Medal.
The gap between rich and poor has never been wider...legislative stalemate paralyzes the country...corporations resist federal regulations...spectacular mergers produce giant companies...the influence of money in politics deepens...bombs explode in crowded streets...small wars proliferate far from our shores...a dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life.
These unnervingly familiar headlines serve as the backdrop for Doris Kearns Goodwin's highly anticipated The Bully Pulpit--a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air.
The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft--a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country's history.
The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine--Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White--teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S. S. McClure.
Goodwin's narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt's death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men.
The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin's brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history--an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.
- Print length928 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSimon & Schuster
- Publication date5 Nov. 2013
- Dimensions15.88 x 5.08 x 23.5 cm
- ISBN-10141654786X
- ISBN-13978-1416547860
Popular titles by this author
Product description
Review
"In her beautiful new account of the lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin spins a tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue."-- "Associated Press"
"By shining a light on a little-discussed President and a much-discussed one, Goodwin manages to make history very much alive and relevant. Better yet--the party politics are explicitly modern."-- "Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"
"Doris Kearns Goodwin tells this tale with her usual literary skill and deep research. ... Goodwin not only sheds light on the birth of the modern political world but chronicles a remarkable friendship between two remarkable men."-- "The Wall Street Journal"
"Goodwin's evocative examination of the Progressive world is smart and engaging. . . . She presents a highly readable and detailed portrait of an era. The Bully Pulpit brings the early 20th century to life and firmly establishes the crucial importance of the press to Progressive politics."-- "The Washington Post"
"Here is where Goodwin's account soars. She captures with masterly precision the depth of the Roosevelt-Taft relationship, the slow dissolution and the growing disillusion, the awkward attempts at rapprochement, and then the final break....It is a story worth telling, and one well told."-- "The Boston Globe"
"If you find the grubby spectacle of today's Washington cause for shame and despair--and really, how could you not?--then I suggest you turn off the TV and board Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest time machine. ... [Goodwin puts] political intrigues and moral dilemmas and daily lives into rich and elegant language. Imagine 'The West Wing' scripted by Henry James."-- "Bill Keller, The New York Times Book Review"
"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin has scored again with 'The Bully Pulpit, ' a thorough and well-written study of two presidents, as well as the journalists who covered them and exposed scandals in government and industry....Her genius in this huge volume (750 pages of text) is to take the three narratives and weave them into a comprehensive, readable study of the time ....The Bully Pulpit is a remarkable study of a tumultuous period in our history."-- "St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
"Swiftly moving account of a friendship that turned sour, broke a political party in two and involved an insistent, omnipresent press corps. . . . It's no small achievement to have something new to say on Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, but Goodwin succeeds admirably. A notable, psychologically charged study in leadership."-- "Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review"
"The interplay between personality and politics, temperament and leadership is one of the key themes animating Doris Kearns Goodwin's telling books...The same is true of her sprawling new book, The Bully Pulpit, which gives us revealing portraits of Theodore Roosevelt and his close friend, handpicked successor and eventual bitter rival, William Howard Taft...She also uses her impressive narrative skills to give us a visceral sense of the world in which Roosevelt and Taft came of age...She creates emotionally detailed portraits of the two men's families, provides an informed understanding of the political forces (conservative, moderate and insurgent) arrayed across the country at the time, and enlivens even highly familiar scenes like Teddy Roosevelt's daring charge up San Juan Hill."--Michiko Kakutani "The New York Times"
"These fascinating times deserve a chronicler as wise and thorough as Goodwin. The Bully Pulpit is splendid reading."-- "Dallas Morning News"
"This sophisticated, character-driven book tells two big stories. . . . This is a fascinating work, even a timely one. . . . It captures the way a political party can be destroyed by factionalism, and it shows the important role investigative journalists play in political life."-- "The Economist"
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster (5 Nov. 2013)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 928 pages
- ISBN-10 : 141654786X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416547860
- Dimensions : 15.88 x 5.08 x 23.5 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,154,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 4,046 in Political Leader Biographies
- 5,356 in 20th Century U.S. History
- 59,467 in Government & Politics
- Customer reviews:
About the author
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN’s interest in leadership began more than half a century ago as a professor at Harvard. Her experiences working for LBJ in the White House and later assisting him on his memoirs led to her bestselling Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She followed up with the Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Goodwin earned the Lincoln Prize for the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals, the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Lincoln, and the Carnegie Medal for The Bully Pulpit, the New York Times bestselling chronicle of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, the writer Richard N. Goodwin. More at www.doriskearnsgoodwin.com @DorisKGoodwin
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from United Kingdom
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Taft would have preferred to have remained a judge but his wife's ambition for him to become President overruled his own inclination. Being sniped at by Roosevelt who wanted his old job back and who stood as a third party candidate, having failed to get the Republican nomination, ensured that Taft lost and was a one term President.
However his good grace and the high regard he was held in by others meant that he got the job he really wanted as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Roosevelt demonstrated the supreme political skill of getting a reluctant congress to pass his anti trust laws and thereby prevented powerful corporations from throttling competition.
The tangled weave of early 20th Century American politics, with all its chicanery, corruption and double dealing is thrillingly told. The personalities are larger than life and vividly portrayed. There are some fascinating side issues such as the USA taking on the role of colonial masters in the Philippines. Taft proved to be an assured and enlightened Governor. It was an episode of American history of which I knew nothing.
The book also contains so many personal details, which meant an enjoyable and gossipy read in a serious and well researched book.
I was amused that Roosevelt objected to Taft's enthusiasm for golf as he perceived it as a rich man's game and that politician's who played it were sending out the wrong message. Meantime Roosevelt himself went big game hunting which only seriously rich men can do.
Some biographies can be bloody awful. Leaving you knowing just about everything the subject had for breakfast every day of their lives but nothing about their times and the part they played in them. Not so for this book. It is brilliant history and brilliant writing and I have already ordered 'Team of Rivals' next.
Thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in US politics
and the impact of media on shaping public opinion.
Perhaps Ms Kearns Goodwin will undertake a similar
analysis of the 2016 Presidential election and the impact
of both media and social media on the outcome.
I would look forward to such a book.