American History

For more than 200 years, candidates have campaigned for the highest office in the land, debating the major issues facing the country, capturing the attention of the voters, and reflecting the will of the people. Presidential elections are the centerpiece of American democracy, as citizens …

See How They Ran explores why candidates campaign as they do, why Americans complain about it, and what these evolving patterns and changing images tell us about American democracy itself. On the eve of every election, many Americans become convinced that this presidential campaign is worse …

Some see the 1980s as a Golden Age, a “Morning in America” when Ronald Reagan revived America’s economy, reoriented American politics, and restored Americans’ faith in their country and in themselves. Others see the 1980s as a new “Gilded Age,” an era that was selfish, …

It began with Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. It accelerated with Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson became partners in office and Nancy and Ronnie seemed joined at the hip. Without question, the presidential couple has arrived as a force in politics. Yet …

For most first ladies, their years in the White House are their sole claim to fame. For one-Hillary Rodham Clinton-that tenure was just another step in a remarkable political career. Neither a “hit job” nor a facile tribute, Gil Troy’s lively and refreshingly nonsensational new …

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy-most would agree their presidencies were among the most successful in American history. But what made these very different men such effective leaders? According to presidential historian Gil Troy, these presidents succeeded not because …

Did America’s fortieth president lead a conservative counterrevolution that left liberalism gasping for air? The answer, for both his admirers and his detractors, is often “yes.” In Morning in America, Gil Troy argues that the Great Communicator was also the Great Conciliator. His pioneering and lively …

“They called it the Reagan revolution,” Ronald Reagan noted in his Farewell Address. “Well, I’ll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.” Nearly two decades after that 1989 speech, debate …

The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the charismatic and flawed baby …