Raising Cain: The Life and Politics of Senator Harry P. Cain

Raising Cain: The Life and Politics of Senator Harry P. Cain Review

Decades ago, Harry Cain warned, "It is possible to become so safe that nobody can be free." Still the conflict rages on between individual freedom and national security. C. Mark Smith's Raising Cain profiles a complex and controversial public servant who remained true to one goal supporting the rights of the individual. Cain opposed the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II, defended provocative figures as a U.S. Senator, worked for civil rights in Florida, and in the controversy that destroyed his public career, defied his president and his party to protect the freedom of thousands of Americans threatened during the McCarthy era.

Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation (Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series)

Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation (Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series) Review

This is a book about the politics of representative democracy, written from the perspective of the politicians who make it work. Typically, political scientists study campaigns from the perspective of the voter and for the purpose of explaining election outcomes. But campaigns also need to be studied from the perspective of the candidate, for the purpose of understanding representation.

Richard F. Fenno, Jr., traveled with ten U.S. senators as they campaigned in their home states-using what he calls the "drop in/drop out, tag along/hang around" method of research-to present a developmental picture of their activities. His focus here is on three such activities—pursuing a career, campaigning for office, and building constituency connections. Taken together, the three constitute the political underpinnings of representative democracy.

Fenno describes the achievement, the testing, and the maintenance of representational relationships. He examines challengers and incumbents, winners and losers, and motivations, strategies, and behaviors; and he reports on differences, similarities, and patterns among them. In studying the candidates' varied careers, campaigns, and connections in stages and sequences and in depth—and in allowing us to hear them reflect on these experiences—Fenno has been able to offer rare insights into campaigns and elections, insights very different from conventional ones that concentrate on the behavior of voters.

In its focus on the process of representative democracy, Senators on the Campaign Trail offers a rich, rounded, developmental view of some high-level individuals who work at the business of representation. For scholars, the book suggests some qualitative confirmation and added stimulation in forging generalizations about politicians. For citizens, the book argues for replacing the conventional blanket condemnation of our politicians, so prevalent today, with more discriminating judgments about what they do, and why and to what purpose they do it.

The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle

The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle Review

Between 1901 and 1907, a broad coalition of Protestant churches sought to expel newly elected Reed Smoot from the Senate, arguing that as an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Smoot was a lawbreaker and therefore unfit to be a lawmaker. The resulting Senate investigative hearing featured testimony on every peculiarity of Mormonism, especially its polygamous family structure. The Smoot hearing ultimately mediated a compromise between Progressive Era Protestantism and Mormonism and resolved the nation's long-standing "Mormon Problem." On a broader scale, Kathleen Flake shows how this landmark hearing provided the occasion for the country--through its elected representatives, the daily press, citizen petitions, and social reform activism--to reconsider the scope of religious free exercise in the new century.

Flake contends that the Smoot hearing was the forge in which the Latter-day Saints, the Protestants, and the Senate hammered out a model for church-state relations, shaping for a new generation of non-Protestant and non-Christian Americans what it meant to be free and religious. In addition, she discusses the Latter-day Saints' use of narrative and collective memory to retain their religious identity even as they changed to meet the nation's demands.

I Shared the Dream: The Pride, Passion, and Politics of the First Black Woman Senator from Kentucky

I Shared the Dream: The Pride, Passion, and Politics of the First Black Woman Senator from Kentucky Review

In this landmark autobiography by one of the very first women treated as a peer by the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, former Kentucky State Senator Georgia Davis breaks her long silence to reveal her fascinating life story, including the truth regarding her often hinted about relationship with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A veteran of the Selma and Frankfort marches, she reveals new insights not only on King, but also on Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Vernon Jordan, Benjamin Hooks, and others. She also cast new lights, from the feminine perspective, on the influence of the Baptist Ministry and the role of women in the Civil Rights Movement.

Named "one of the black women who changed America" and "one of the 50 who made Kentucky', she recounts her extraordinary journey from the two-room cabin where she was born the niece of a Wilson County slave, to the Senate floor where when introduced and championed such bills as the first Open Housing Law in Kentucky, Displaced Homemaker Legislation, and Prohibition of Employment Discrimination; the call from King on his way to Memphis - "Senator, I need you, please come" - and her memories of the tragedy at the Lorraine Hotel.

I Shared the Dream is an important book with a compelling new vision of a major period in history, and the remarkable woman who was part of it