Get ready to vote with some books about past elections. Learn about the stolen election of 1876, or discover how the 1968 election transformed the landscape of American politics.
Compiled by:
Elizabeth G.
Available from eLibrary resources
This is a chronicle and fascinating episode of American history is set during the time of Prohibition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the League of Nations and post-World War I. Including a cast of characters such as Eugene Debs, Hiram Johnson, Alfred E. Smith, and William Jennings Bryan, Pietrusza’s book spans the administrations of Teddy Roosevelt through Woodrow Wilson.
Available from eLibrary resources
Three presidents, three giants, one election, and a thousand secrets. Round one of the 1960s electrifying presidential contest pits charismatic upstart John Kennedy's blend of Harvard eloquence, social register style, and dashing vigor against molasses-drawl Senate power broker Lyndon's Johnson mercurial mix of overbearing Texas bluster and maddening indecision. Kennedy vs. Johnson—the cool patrician versus the manic cowboy. Round two pits JFK—dashing yet flawed in ways kept carefully hidden for an adoring public—head-to-head with lone-wolf Richard Nixon's brooding, ultimately-damned, quest for political power and personal validation.
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The Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1872 was the most contentious in American history. After both parties complained of corruption, neither candidate would concede, so two governors claimed office and chaos erupted. Rival newspapers engaged in a bitter war of words, politicians plotted to overthrow the government, and their supporters fought in the streets and attempted assassinations
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The Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding has logged considerable time in Russia as a foreign reporter. In this fast-paced narrative, Harding takes the reader through the efforts of Donald Trump and his campaign circle to gain influence and the election.
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Morris recreates in detail the presidential election that perverted the rule of law and almost rekindled the American Civil War. The election pitted Hayes, an affable, born politician, against Tilden, a bookish lifelong bachelor barrister who once dropped out of Yale University because he didn’t like the food.
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In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns. Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel.
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When Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson became president, a fraught time in America became perilous. Congress was divided over how Reconstruction should be accomplished, as well as the question of Black suffrage. The South roiled with violence, lawlessness, and efforts to preserve the pre-Civil War society. Andrew Johnson—chosen as vice president for electability because he was a Southern Democrat—had no interest in following Lincoln's agenda.
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An account of the famous open-air 1858 Senate election debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln provides insight into their political rivalry while gauging mid-19th century issues and how they affected local and presidential campaigns.
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The vivid, behind-the-scenes story of perhaps the most consequential political moment in America's history—Abraham Lincoln's epochal nomination as the Republican Party's candidate for president in 1860. Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln had a record of political failure. In 1858, he had lost a celebrated Senate bid against incumbent Stephen Douglas, his second failed Senate run, and had not held public office since one term in Congress a decade earlier.
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Long before Lawrence O’Donnell was the anchor of his own political talk show on MSNBC, he was a senior adviser to Senator Patrick Moynihan, one of postwar America’s wisest political minds. The 1968 presidential election—marked by Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, massive upheaval in the Democratic Party, and the first of Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks—was O’Donnell’s own political coming of age. In the decades since, the election has remained one of his abiding fascinations, as it set the tone for so much of what followed in American politics, all the way through to today.
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The presidential election of 1896 is widely acknowledged as one of only a few that brought about fundamental realignments in American politics. New voting patterns replaced old, a new majority party came to power, and national policies shifted to reflect new realities. R. Hal Williams now presents the first study of that campaign in nearly 50 years, offering fresh interpretations on the victory of Republican William McKinley over Democrat William Jennings Bryan.
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Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his 40s, his sole claim on the public's affections derived from his victory in a 30-minute battle at New Orleans in early 1815. Yet those in his immediate circle believed he was a great man who should be president of the United States. Jackson's election in 1828 is usually viewed as a result of the expansion of democracy.
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An earlier account of Russia’s influence in the campaign of Donald Trump, Russian Roulette weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After United States-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 presidential election.
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An in-depth dissection of Hillary Clinton’s second campaign for the president, Shattered offers an object lesson in how Hillary herself made victory an uphill battle, how her difficulty articulating a vision irreparably hobbled her impact with voters, and how the campaign failed to internalize the lessons of populist fury from the hard-fought primary against Bernie Sanders.
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In The Vote Collectors, Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner tell the story of the political shenanigans in Bladen County, exposing the shocking vulnerability of local elections and explaining why our present systems are powerless to monitor and prevent fraud. In their hands, this tale of rural corruption becomes a fascinating narrative of the long clash of racism and electioneering—and a larger story about the challenges to democracy in the rural South. At a time rife with accusations of election fraud, The Vote Collectors shows the reality of election stealing in one southern county, where democracy was undermined the old-fashioned way: one absentee ballot at a time.
Available from eLibrary resources
What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: how do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race—and scours the psyches of contenders from George Bush and Robert Dole to Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart—Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer comes up with the answers, in a book that is vast, exhaustively researched, and sometimes appalling in its revelations.