Mansfield And Dirksen

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Mansfield and Dirksen

Author : Marc C. Johnson
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806193433
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Mansfield and Dirksen by : Marc C. Johnson

Download or read book Mansfield and Dirksen written by Marc C. Johnson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Senate is so sharply polarized along partisan and ideological lines today that it’s easy to believe it was always this way. But in the turbulent 1960s, even as battles over civil rights and the war in Vietnam dominated American politics, bipartisanship often prevailed. One key reason: two remarkable leaders who remain giants of the Senate—Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, the longest-serving majority leader in Senate history, so revered for his integrity, fairness, and modesty that the late Washington Post reporter David Broder called him “the greatest American I ever met.” The political and personal relationship of these party leaders, extraordinary by today’s standards, is the lens through which Marc C. Johnson examines the Senate in that tumultuous time. Working together, with the Democrat often ceding public leadership to his Republican counterpart, Mansfield and Dirksen passed landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation, created Medicare, and helped bring about a foundational nuclear arms limitation treaty. The two leaders could not have been more different in personality and style: Mansfield, a laconic, soft-spoken, almost shy college history professor, and Dirksen, an aspiring actor known for his flamboyance and sense of humor, dubbed the “Wizard of Ooze” by reporters. Drawing on extensive Senate archives, Johnson explores the congressional careers of these iconic leaders, their intimate relationships with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and their own close professional friendship based on respect, candor, and mutual affection. A study of politics but also an analysis of different approaches to leadership, this is a portrait of a U.S. Senate that no longer exists—one in which two leaders, while exercising partisan political responsibilities, could still come together to pass groundbreaking legislation—and a reminder of what is possible.

Mansfield and Dirksen

Author : Marc C. Johnson
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806193425
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Mansfield and Dirksen by : Marc C. Johnson

Download or read book Mansfield and Dirksen written by Marc C. Johnson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2023-08 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Senate is so sharply polarized along partisan and ideological lines today that it’s easy to believe it was always this way. But in the turbulent 1960s, even as battles over civil rights and the war in Vietnam dominated American politics, bipartisanship often prevailed. One key reason: two remarkable leaders who remain giants of the Senate—Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, the longest-serving majority leader in Senate history, so revered for his integrity, fairness, and modesty that the late Washington Post reporter David Broder called him “the greatest American I ever met.” The political and personal relationship of these party leaders, extraordinary by today’s standards, is the lens through which Marc C. Johnson examines the Senate in that tumultuous time. Working together, with the Democrat often ceding public leadership to his Republican counterpart, Mansfield and Dirksen passed landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation, created Medicare, and helped bring about a foundational nuclear arms limitation treaty. The two leaders could not have been more different in personality and style: Mansfield, a laconic, soft-spoken, almost shy college history professor, and Dirksen, an aspiring actor known for his flamboyance and sense of humor, dubbed the “Wizard of Ooze” by reporters. Drawing on extensive Senate archives, Johnson explores the congressional careers of these iconic leaders, their intimate relationships with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and their own close professional friendship based on respect, candor, and mutual affection. A study of politics but also an analysis of different approaches to leadership, this is a portrait of a U.S. Senate that no longer exists—one in which two leaders, while exercising partisan political responsibilities, could still come together to pass groundbreaking legislation—and a reminder of what is possible.

Senator Mansfield

Author : Don Oberdorfer
Publisher : Smithsonian Institution
ISBN 13 : 1588345149
Total Pages : 820 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (883 download)

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Book Synopsis Senator Mansfield by : Don Oberdorfer

Download or read book Senator Mansfield written by Don Oberdorfer and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spellbinding biography of one of the most powerful and dignified men ever to come to DC—Senator Mike Mansfield. Mike Mansfield's career as the longest serving majority leader is finally given its due in this extraordinary biography. In many respects, Mansfield's dignity and decorum represent the high-water mark of the US Senate: he was respected as a leader who helped build consensus on tough issues and was renowned for his ability to work across the aisle and build strong coalitions. Amazingly, he would have breakfast every morning with a member of the opposing party. Mansfield was instrumental in pushing through some of the most influential legislation of the twentieth century. He was at the helm when the Senate passed landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the creation of Medicare, and the nuclear test ban treaty. Mansfield played a crucial role in shaping America's foreign policy, corresponding with JFK about his opposition to the growing presence of the US in Southeast Asia. As ambassador to Japan, his conversations with Cambodia and China paved the way for Nixon's historic trip to China in 1972.

Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader

Author : Francis Ralph Valeo
Publisher : M.E. Sharpe
ISBN 13 : 9780765604507
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (45 download)

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Book Synopsis Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader by : Francis Ralph Valeo

Download or read book Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader written by Francis Ralph Valeo and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1999 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about Mike Mansfield and the U.S. Senate during the period that he served as majority leader. For eight consecutive two-year terms, Mansfield's leadership went uncontested. Extending from 1961 through 1976, it began when John F. Kennedy succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower, continued through the Johnson and Nixon administrations, and ended only with Mansfield's retirement during the presidency of Gerald Ford.

Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader

Author : Francis R. Valeo
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317464745
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader by : Francis R. Valeo

Download or read book Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader written by Francis R. Valeo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Mike Mansfield's influential fifteen-year reign as Senate Majority Leader is colored with some of the most important events of this century: the election of John F. Kennedy, the Kennedy and King assassinations, student and political unrest of the late Sixties, Vietnam, Watergate, the Nixon resignation, and numerous important pieces of legislation from the era, among them the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Valeo, Secretary of the Senate under Mansfield, writes about the Senate and Mansfield's role in national affairs from 1961-76. He argues that Mansfield was instrumental in shaping a more egalitarian kind of Senate than that of the 1950s, when Lyndon B. Johnson was Majority Leader.

Senate Committee Staffing. A Survey Prepared at the Request of Senator Mike Mansfield, of Montana and Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, of Illinois by the Legislative Reference Service Library of Congress. Presented by Mr. Dirksen, April 23, 1963. -- Ordered to be Printed

Download Senate Committee Staffing. A Survey Prepared at the Request of Senator Mike Mansfield, of Montana and Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, of Illinois by the Legislative Reference Service Library of Congress. Presented by Mr. Dirksen, April 23, 1963. -- Ordered to be Printed PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (858 download)

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Book Synopsis Senate Committee Staffing. A Survey Prepared at the Request of Senator Mike Mansfield, of Montana and Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, of Illinois by the Legislative Reference Service Library of Congress. Presented by Mr. Dirksen, April 23, 1963. -- Ordered to be Printed by :

Download or read book Senate Committee Staffing. A Survey Prepared at the Request of Senator Mike Mansfield, of Montana and Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, of Illinois by the Legislative Reference Service Library of Congress. Presented by Mr. Dirksen, April 23, 1963. -- Ordered to be Printed written by and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Everett Dirksen and His Presidents

Author : Byron C. Hulsey
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Everett Dirksen and His Presidents by : Byron C. Hulsey

Download or read book Everett Dirksen and His Presidents written by Byron C. Hulsey and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was as recognizable by his mellifluous voice as by his rumpled appearance. Everett McKinley Dirksen was one of the most colorful American politicians of the twentieth century and was considered by some the most powerful man in Congress. Now Byron Hulsey takes a new look at the senator from Illinois to show how his interactions with the White House made him a pivotal figure in American politics during the Cold War era. Hulsey traces Dirksen's relationships with four presidents to show how the senator shifted from being a major Republican critic of Truman to an ardent Republican supporter of LBJ. Dirksen learned "suprapartisan politics" from Eisenhower and became Ike's most trusted confidant on Capitol Hill; then as Senate Minority Leader he played a key role in furthering the ambitious goals of the Johnson administration. Hulsey analyzes the reasons for Dirksen's dramatic policy reversals, telling how the senator who in 1950 warned of the dangers of a leviathan executive came to embrace the power of the presidential office to provide for the social welfare, contain the spread of communism, and guarantee civil rights. Drawing on primary sources at the Johnson presidential library and the Dirksen Congressional Center, Hulsey shows how the senator combined legislative craftsmanship with the ability to get bills passed. He links Dirksen to the issues and events that shaped the 1950s and 1960s and tells how the Johnson-Dirksen coalition moved domestic policy forward through civil rights legislation but ran aground on the insurmountable problem of Vietnam. Hulsey also uses Dirksen's career to explore change, continuity, and conflict in the Republican Party over two decades. He explains how the GOP evolved through internal political and ideological tensions from the Taft-Eisenhower contest through the McCarthy era to the beginning of Nixon administration, revealing Dirksen's role in that process. By the time of Dirksen's death in 1969, the Vietnam War, the explosion of urban riots, and President Nixon's preference for the politics of resentment put an end to the suprapartisan spirit. Hulsey's book recreates a Washington milieu the likes of which may never be seen again, offering a lens for viewing postwar American politics while painting the definitive political portrait of one of our most remarkable leaders.

Congressional Lions

Author : J. Michael Martinez
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 149855945X
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Congressional Lions by : J. Michael Martinez

Download or read book Congressional Lions written by J. Michael Martinez and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In some periods of American history, members of the legislative branch have been as influential, and sometimes more influential, than a particular president in crafting public policy and reacting to world events. Congressional Lions examines twelve influential members of Congress throughout American history to understand their role in shaping the life of the nation. The book does not focus exclusively on the biographical details of these lawmakers, although biography invariably plays a role in recalling their triumphs and tragedies. Instead, the book highlights members’ legislative accomplishments as well as the circumstances surrounding their congressional service.

Tuesday Night Massacre

Author : Marc C. Johnson
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806169745
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Tuesday Night Massacre by : Marc C. Johnson

Download or read book Tuesday Night Massacre written by Marc C. Johnson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While political history has plenty to say about the impact of Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980, four Senate races that same year have garnered far less attention—despite their similarly profound political effect. Tuesday Night Massacre looks at those races. In examining the defeat in 1980 of Idaho’s Frank Church, South Dakota’s George McGovern, John Culver of Iowa, and Birch Bayh of Indiana, Marc C. Johnson tells the story of the beginnings of the divisive partisanship that has become a constant feature of American politics. The turnover of these seats not only allowed Republicans to gain control of the Senate for the first time since 1954 but also fundamentally altered the conduct of American politics. The incumbents were politicians of national reputation who often worked with members of the other party to accomplish significant legislative objectives—but they were, Johnson suggests, unprepared and ill-equipped to counter nakedly negative emotional appeals to the “politically passive voter.” Such was the campaign of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the organization founded by several young conservative political activists who targeted these four senators for defeat. Johnson describes how such groups, amassing a great amount of money, could make outrageous and devastating claims about incumbents—“baby killers” who were “soft on communism,” for example—on behalf of a candidate who remained above the fray. Among the key players in this sordid drama are NCPAC chairman Terry Dolan; Washington lobbyist Charles Black, a top GOP advisor to several presidential campaigns and one-time business partner of Paul Manafort; and Roger Stone, self-described “dirty trickster” for Richard Nixon and confidant of Donald Trump. Connecting the dots between the Goldwater era of the 1960s and the ascent of Trump, Tuesday Night Massacre charts the radicalization of the Republican Party and the rise of the independent expenditure campaign, with its divisive, negative techniques, a change that has deeply—and perhaps permanently—warped the culture of bipartisanship that once prevailed in American politics.

Political Hell-Raiser

Author : Marc C. Johnson
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806163771
Total Pages : 505 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Hell-Raiser by : Marc C. Johnson

Download or read book Political Hell-Raiser written by Marc C. Johnson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burton K. Wheeler (1882-1975) may have been the most powerful politician Montana ever produced, and he was one of the most influential—and controversial—members of the United States Senate during three of the most eventful decades in American history. A New Deal Democrat and lifelong opponent of concentrated power—whether economic, military, or executive—he consistently acted with a righteous personal and political independence that has all but disappeared from the public sphere. Political Hell-Raiser is the first book to tell the full story of Wheeler, a genuine maverick whose successes and failures were woven into the political fabric of twentieth-century America. Wheeler came of political age amid antiwar and labor unrest in Butte, Montana, during World War I. As a crusading United States attorney, he battled Montana’s powerful economic interests, championed farmers and miners, and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1922. There he made his name as one of the “Montana scandalmongers,” uncovering corruption in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. Drawing on extensive research and new archival sources, Marc C. Johnson follows Wheeler from his early backing of Franklin D. Roosevelt and ardent support of the New Deal to his forceful opposition to Roosevelt’s plan to expand the Supreme Court and, in a move widely viewed as political suicide, his emergence as the most prominent spokesman against U.S. involvement in World War II right up to three days before Pearl Harbor. Johnson provides the most thorough telling of Wheeler’s entire career, including all its accomplishments and contradictions, as well as the political storms that the senator both encouraged and endured. The book convincingly establishes the place and importance of this principled hell-raiser in American political history.

The Senate Syndrome

Author : Steven S. Smith
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806145927
Total Pages : 455 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis The Senate Syndrome by : Steven S. Smith

Download or read book The Senate Syndrome written by Steven S. Smith and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its rock-bottom approval ratings, acrimonious partisan battles, and apparent inability to do its legislative business, the U.S. Senate might easily be deemed unworthy of attention, if not downright irrelevant. This book tells us that would be a mistake. Because the Senate has become the place where the policy-making process most frequently stalls, any effective resolution to our polarized politics demands a clear understanding of how the formerly august legislative body once worked and how it came to the present crisis. Steven S. Smith provides that understanding in The Senate Syndrome. Like the Senate itself, Smith’s account is grounded in history. Countering a cacophony of inexpert opinion and a widespread misunderstanding of political and legislative history, the book fills in a world of missing information—about debates among senators concerning fundamental democratic processes and the workings of institutional rules, procedures, and norms. And Smith does so in a clear and engaging manner. He puts the present problems of the Senate—the “Senate syndrome,” as he calls them—into historical context by explaining how particular ideas and procedures were first framed and how they transformed with the times. Along the way he debunks a number of myths about the Senate, many perpetuated by senators themselves, and makes some pointed observations about the media’s coverage of Congress. The Senate Syndrome goes beyond explaining such seeming technicalities as the difference between regular filibusters and post-cloture filibusters, the importance of chair rulings, the changing role of the parliamentarian, and the debate over whether appeals of points of order should be subject to cloture margins, to show why understanding them matters. At stake is resolution of the Senate syndrome, and the critical underlying struggle between majority rule and minority rights in American policy making.

Dirksen: Portrait of a Public Man

Author : Neil MacNeil
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Dirksen: Portrait of a Public Man by : Neil MacNeil

Download or read book Dirksen: Portrait of a Public Man written by Neil MacNeil and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Little Giant

Author : Carl Albert
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 9780806132006
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Little Giant by : Carl Albert

Download or read book Little Giant written by Carl Albert and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1999-09-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At age six, Carl Albert knew he wanted to serve in the United States Congress. In 1947 he realized his dream when he was elected to serve in the House of Representatives alongside John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. In Little Giant, Albert relates the story of his life in Oklahoma and his road to Congress, where after eight years of service he joined its leadership and shaped the legislation known as Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society. In 1971 he began his own Speakership; six years later, when it ended, Congress had been reshaped and had weathered the constitutional crisis of Richard Nixon's "Imperial Presidency."

An Uncommon Man

Author : G. Wayne Miller
Publisher : UPNE
ISBN 13 : 1611681871
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (116 download)

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Book Synopsis An Uncommon Man by : G. Wayne Miller

Download or read book An Uncommon Man written by G. Wayne Miller and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2011 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only biography of Claiborne Pell, the six-term senator from Rhode Island best known as the sponsor of the educational Pell Grants

United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art

Author : Diane K. Skvarla
Publisher : Government Printing Office
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art by : Diane K. Skvarla

Download or read book United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art written by Diane K. Skvarla and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2005-08 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Capitol abounds in magnificent art that rivals its exterior architectural splendor. The fine art held by the U.S. Senate comprises much of this treasured heritage. It spans over 200 years of history & contains works by such celebrated artists as Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Hiram Powers, Daniel Chester French, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, Walker Hancock, & Alexander Calder. This volume provides previously unpublished information on the 160 paintings & sculptures in the U.S. Senate. Each work of art -- from portraiture of prominent senators to scenes depicting significant events in U.S. history -- is illus. with a full-page color photo, accompanied by an essay & secondary images that place the work in historical & aesthetic context.

The Great American Outlaw

Author : Frank Richard Prassel
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 9780806128429
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (284 download)

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Book Synopsis The Great American Outlaw by : Frank Richard Prassel

Download or read book The Great American Outlaw written by Frank Richard Prassel and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1996-09-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores in depth the origins, development, and prospects of outlawry and of the relationship of outlaws to the social conditions of changing times. Throughout American history you will find larger-than-life brigands in every period and every region. Often, because we hunger for simple justice, we romanticize them to the point of being unable to separate fact from fiction. Frank Richard Prassel brings this home in a thorough and fascinating examination of the concept of outlawry from Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, and Blackbeard through Jean Lafitte, Pancho Villa, and Billy the Kid to more modern personalities such as John Dillinger, Claude Dallas, and D. B. Cooper. A separate chapter on molls, plus equal treatment in the histories of gangs, traces women's involvement in outlaw activities. Prassel covers the folklore as well as the facts, even including an appendix of ballads by and about outlaws. He makes clear how this motley group of bandits, pirates, highwaymen, desperadoes, rebels, hoodlums, renegades, gangsters, and fugitives—who stand tall in myth—wither in the light of truth, but flourish in the movies. As he tells the stories, there is little to confirm that Jesse and Frank James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Daltons, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Belle Starr, the Apache Kid, or any of the so-called good badmen, did anything that did not enrich or otherwise benefit themselves. But there is plenty of evidence, in the form of slain victims and ruined lives, to show how many ways they caused harm. The Great American Outlaw is as much an excellent survey on the phenomenon as it is a brilliant exposition of the larger than-life figures who created it. Above all, it is a tribute to that aspect of humanity that Americans admire most and that Prassel describes as a willingness "to fight, however hopelessly, against exhibitions of privilege."

The American Senate

Author : Neil MacNeil
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199339570
Total Pages : 470 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Senate by : Neil MacNeil

Download or read book The American Senate written by Neil MacNeil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Society for History in the Federal Government's George Pendleton Prize for 2013 The United States Senate has fallen on hard times. Once known as the greatest deliberative body in the world, it now has a reputation as a partisan, dysfunctional chamber. What happened to the house that forged American history's great compromises? In this groundbreaking work, a distinguished journalist and an eminent historian provide an insider's history of the United States Senate. Richard A. Baker, historian emeritus of the Senate, and Neil MacNeil, former chief congressional correspondent for Time magazine, integrate nearly a century of combined experience on Capitol Hill with deep research and state-of-the-art scholarship. They explore the Senate's historical evolution with one eye on persistent structural pressures and the other on recent transformations. Here, for example, are the Senate's struggles with the presidency--from George Washington's first, disastrous visit to the chamber on August 22, 1789, through now-forgotten conflicts with Presidents Garfield and Cleveland, to current war powers disputes. The authors also explore the Senate's potent investigative power, and show how it began with an inquiry into John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. It took flight with committees on the conduct of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and World War II; and it gained a high profile with Joseph McCarthy's rampage against communism, Estes Kefauver's organized-crime hearings (the first to be broadcast), and its Watergate investigation. Within the book are surprises as well. For example, the office of majority leader first acquired real power in 1952--not with Lyndon Johnson, but with Republican Robert Taft. Johnson accelerated the trend, tampering with the sacred principle of seniority in order to control issues such as committee assignments. Rampant filibustering, the authors find, was the ironic result of the passage of 1960s civil rights legislation. No longer stigmatized as a white-supremacist tool, its use became routine, especially as the Senate became more partisan in the 1970s. Thoughtful and incisive, The American Senate: An Insider's History transforms our understanding of Congress's upper house.