The F Street Mess

Author : Alice Elizabeth Malavasic
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469635534
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The F Street Mess written by Alice Elizabeth Malavasic and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pushing back against the idea that the Slave Power conspiracy was merely an ideological construction, Alice Elizabeth Malavasic argues that some southern politicians in the 1850s did indeed hold an inordinate amount of power in the antebellum Congress and used it to foster the interests of slavery. Malavasic focuses her argument on Senators David Rice Atchison of Missouri, Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina, and Robert M. T. Hunter and James Murray Mason of Virginia, known by their contemporaries as the "F Street Mess" for the location of the house they shared. Unlike the earlier and better-known triumvirate of John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, the F Street Mess was a functioning oligarchy within the U.S. Senate whose power was based on shared ideology, institutional seniority, and personal friendship. By centering on their most significant achievement--forcing a rewrite of the Nebraska bill that repealed the restriction against slavery above the 36 degrees 30′ parallel--Malavasic demonstrates how the F Street Mess's mastery of the legislative process led to one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in United States history and helped pave the way to secession.

Author : Michael F. Holt
Publisher : Hill and Wang
ISBN 13 : 1429930276
Total Pages : 183 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Fate of Their Country written by Michael F. Holt and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2005-06-20 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How partisan politics lead to the Civil War What brought about the Civil War? Leading historian Michael F. Holt convincingly offers a disturbingly contemporary answer: partisan politics. In this brilliant and succinct book, Holt distills a lifetime of scholarship to demonstrate that secession and war did not arise from two irreconcilable economies any more than from moral objections to slavery. Short-sighted politicians were to blame. Rarely looking beyond the next election, the two dominant political parties used the emotionally charged and largely chimerical issue of slavery's extension westward to pursue reelection and settle political scores, all the while inexorably dragging the nation towards disunion. Despite the majority opinion (held in both the North and South) that slavery could never flourish in the areas that sparked the most contention from 1845 to 1861-the Mexican Cession, Oregon, and Kansas-politicians in Washington, especially members of Congress, realized the partisan value of the issue and acted on short-term political calculations with minimal regard for sectional comity. War was the result. Including select speeches by Lincoln and others, The Fate of Their Country openly challenges us to rethink a seminal moment in America's history.

Author : Rachel A. Shelden
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469610868
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Washington Brotherhood written by Rachel A. Shelden and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional portrayals of politicians in antebellum Washington, D.C., describe a violent and divisive society, full of angry debates and violent duels, a microcosm of the building animosity throughout the country. Yet, in Washington Brotherhood, Rachel Shelden paints a more nuanced portrait of Washington as a less fractious city with a vibrant social and cultural life. Politicians from different parties and sections of the country interacted in a variety of day-to-day activities outside traditional political spaces and came to know one another on a personal level. Shelden shows that this engagement by figures such as Stephen Douglas, John Crittenden, Abraham Lincoln, and Alexander Stephens had important consequences for how lawmakers dealt with the sectional disputes that bedeviled the country during the 1840s and 1850s--particularly disputes involving slavery in the territories. Shelden uses primary documents--from housing records to personal diaries--to reveal the ways in which this political sociability influenced how laws were made in the antebellum era. Ultimately, this Washington "bubble" explains why so many of these men were unprepared for secession and war when the winter of 1860-61 arrived.

Author : David F. Labaree
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022625044X
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Perfect Mess written by David F. Labaree and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read the news about America’s colleges and universities—rising student debt, affirmative action debates, and conflicts between faculty and administrators—and it’s clear that higher education in this country is a total mess. But as David F. Labaree reminds us in this book, it’s always been that way. And that’s exactly why it has become the most successful and sought-after source of learning in the world. Detailing American higher education’s unusual struggle for survival in a free market that never guaranteed its place in society—a fact that seemed to doom it in its early days in the nineteenth century—he tells a lively story of the entrepreneurial spirit that drove American higher education to become the best. And the best it is: today America’s universities and colleges produce the most scholarship, earn the most Nobel prizes, hold the largest endowments, and attract the most esteemed students and scholars from around the world. But this was not an inevitability. Weakly funded by the state, American schools in their early years had to rely on student tuition and alumni donations in order to survive. This gave them tremendous autonomy to seek out sources of financial support and pursue unconventional opportunities to ensure their success. As Labaree shows, by striving as much as possible to meet social needs and fulfill individual ambitions, they developed a broad base of political and financial support that, grounded by large undergraduate programs, allowed for the most cutting-edge research and advanced graduate study ever conducted. As a result, American higher education eventually managed to combine a unique mix of the populist, the practical, and the elite in a single complex system. The answers to today’s problems in higher education are not easy, but as this book shows, they shouldn’t be: no single person or institution can determine higher education’s future. It is something that faculty, administrators, and students—adapting to society’s needs—will determine together, just as they have always done.

Author : Trish Cook
Publisher : Carolrhoda Lab ™
ISBN 13 : 1512401064
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Really Awesome Mess written by Trish Cook and published by Carolrhoda Lab ™. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two teenagers. Two very bumpy roads taken that lead to Heartland Academy. After his parents' divorce, Justin is on rocky mental ground. But when a handful of Tylenol lands him in the hospital, he has really hit rock bottom. A scandalous photo of Emmy leads to vicious rumors around school, but things get worse when she threatens the boy who started it all on Facebook. Justin and Emmy arrive at Heartland Academy, a reform school that will force them to deal with their issues. Along the way they will find a ragtag group of teens who are just as broken, stubborn, and full of sarcasm as themselves. A funny, sad, and remarkable story, A Really Awesome Mess is a journey of friendship and self-discovery.

Author : Joel Ponzio
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1440519757
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book F Wall Street written by Joel Ponzio and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-05-18 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it." —Warren Buffett Investors shouldn't hate the market because of its up and downs. They should capitalize on it—and give a middle finger to those brokers wasting their time (and money) buying and selling, viewing investing as just buying stocks and not taking ownership of a company. In this book, Joe Ponzio gives an "f-you" to Wall Street and teaches you how to become a sharp value investor who uses economic downturns to your advantage. By buying into companies you believe in—but that may be selling for less than their intrinsic value, like high-end retailers in a weak market and discount retailers in a strong one—you will profit from their long-term performance. It's the perfect guide for anyone fed up with Wall Street's bull.

Author : Christopher Buckley
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0307800342
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The White House Mess written by Christopher Buckley and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a pajama-clad President Reagan refusing to leave the White House on his successor’s Inauguration Day, Buckley has given this farce of Oval Office politics a nearly perfect beginning. Parodying the familiar form of the White House memoir, Buckley recounts the turbulent years of the Democratic Tucker administration, as told by loyalist Herbert Wadlough. Through this former accountant’s eyes, we see the infighting that plagues the White House, the President’s faltering marriage to a former starlet, and his ongoing crises.

Author : Citizens Against Government Waste
Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN 13 : 146685314X
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Pig Book written by Citizens Against Government Waste and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of: - $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa - $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil - $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri - $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!) - $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California - $1 million for ornamental fish research Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!

Author : Michael J. Birkner
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 080717081X
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens written by Michael J. Birkner and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2019-06-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens examines the political interests, relationships, and practices of two of the era’s most prominent politicians as well as the political landscapes they inhabited and informed. Both men called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, their home, and both were bachelors. During the 1850s, James Buchanan tried to keep the Democratic Party alive as the slavery debate divided his peers and the political system. Thaddeus Stevens, meanwhile, as Whig turned Republican, invested in the federal government to encourage economic development and social reform, especially antislavery and Republican Reconstruction. Considering Buchanan and Stevens’s divergent lives alongside their political and social worlds reveals the dynamics and directions of American politics, especially northern interests and identities. While focusing on these individuals, the contributors also explore the roles of parties and patronage in informing political loyalties and behavior. They further track personal connections across lines of gender and geography and underline the importance of details like who regularly dined and conversed with whom, the complex social milieu of Washington, the role of rumor in determining political allegiances, and the ways personality and failing relationships mattered in a hothouse of national politics fueled by slavery and expansion. The essays in The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens collectively invite further consideration of how parties, personality, place, and private lives influenced the political interests and actions of an age affected by race, religion, region, civil war, and reconstruction.

Author : James Baldwin
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0525566120
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book If Beale Street Could Talk (Movie Tie-In) written by James Baldwin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning love story about a young Black woman whose life is torn apart when her lover is wrongly accused of a crime—"a moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless" (The New York Times Book Review). "One of the best books Baldwin has ever written—perhaps the best of all." —The Philadelphia Inquirer Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions—affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.