The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2007

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SAGE Publications, 2008 - History - 530 pages

Now in a new fifth edition, The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2007—winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for History, Politics, and Philosophy—examines both the constitutional precepts of the presidency and the social, economic, political, and international conditions that continue to shape it. Authors Sidney Milkis and Michael Nelson analyze the origins of the modern presidency and discuss the patterns of presidential conduct that developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and continue into the twenty-first. With careful consideration of every presidential administration, attention is focused more on how individual presidents shaped the institution, and less on the idiosyncrasies of their personalities.

Unlike other texts on the presidency that divide executive politics into discrete topical chapters, The American Presidency integrates all aspects of the presidency into a dynamic whole and examines the variation of presidential relationships and roles from administration to administration. Students gain both an understanding of the office as it really exists and a solid historical foundation from which to better appreciate its evolution.

Thoroughly updated, the fifth edition provides complete coverage of the George W. Bush administration, up to and including the 2004 and 2006 elections. The authors meticulously take into account new research on the presidency, while continuing to refine the writing and analysis of what has become a classic in the field.

From inside the book

Contents

CHAPTER 2
26
CHAPTER 3
68
CHAPTER 4
97
Copyright

14 other sections not shown

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About the author (2008)

Sidney M. Milkis is the White Burkett Miller Professor and the Cavaliers' Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Politics and a Faculty Associate at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. His books include The President and the Parties (1993), The Politics of Regulatory Change, 2d edition (1996), Political Parties and Constitutional Government (1999), Presidential Greatness (2000), and The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (2002). His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Studies in American Political Development, The Journal of Policy History, and several edited volumes.

Michael Nelson is Fulmer Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College and a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. A former editor of the Washington Monthly, his most recent books include Trump’s First Year (2018); The Elections of 2016 (2018); The Evolving Presidency: Landmark Documents (2019); The American Presidency: Origins and Development (with Sidney M. Milkis, 2011); and Governing at Home: The White House and Domestic Policymaking (with Russell B. Riley, 2011). Nelson has contributed to numerous journals, including the Journal of Policy History, Journal of Politics, and Political Science Quarterly. He also has written multiple articles on subjects as varied as baseball, Frank Sinatra, and C. S. Lewis. More than fifty of his articles have been anthologized in works of political science, history, and English composition. His 2014 book, Resilient America: Electing Nixon, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government, won the American Political Science Association’s Richard E. Neustadt Award for best book on the presidency published that year; and his 2006 book with John Lyman Mason, How the South Joined the Gambling Nation, won the Southern Political Science Association’s V.O. Key Award.

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