Short of the Glory: The Fall and Redemption of Edward F. Prichard Jr.

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University Press of Kentucky, Sep 12, 2010 - Biography & Autobiography - 360 pages
" Arthur Schlesinger Jr. thought that he might one day become president. He was a protege of Felix Frankfurter and Fred Vinson--a political prodigy who held a series of important posts in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Whatever became of Edward F. Prichard, Jr., so young and brilliant and seemingly destined for glory? Prichard was a complex man, and his story is tragically ironic. The boy from Bourbon County, Kentucky, graduated at the top of his Princeton class and cut a wide swath at Harvard Law School. He went on to clerk in the U.S. Supreme Court and become an important figure in Roosevelt's Brain Trust. Yet Prichard--known for his dazzling wit and photographic memory--fell victim to the hubris that had helped to make him great. In 1948, he was indicted for stuffing 254 votes in a U.S. Senate race. J. Edgar Hoover, never a fan of the young genius, made sure he was prosecuted, and so many of the members of the Supreme Court were Prichard's friends that not enough justices were left to hear his appeal. So the man Roosevelt's advisors had called the boy wonder of the New Deal went to jail. Prichard's meteoric rise and fall is essentially a Greek tragedy set on the stage of American politics. Pardoned by President Truman, Prichard spent the next twenty-five years working his way out of political exile. Gradually he became a trusted advisor to governors and legislators, though without recognition or compensation. Finally, in the 1970s and 1980s, Prichard emerged as his home state's most persuasive and eloquent voice for education reform, finally regaining the respect he had thrown away in his arrogant youth.
 

Contents

A Christmas Funeral
1
Part I Star Rising
5
1 The Political Education of Sonny Prichard
7
2 Banishment to Paradise
24
3 Harvard Law School
44
4 An Extended Campus
59
5 The Wunderkind
79
6 Corrective Steps
101
10 Ashland
171
11 New Trials
184
12 Wandering in the Wilderness
201
Part lll Star Reborn
219
13 Back in the Arena
221
14 Picking up the Pieces
239
15 Twilight Renaissance
252
16 The Final Struggle
266

7 A Lukewarm Reception
113
Part II Star Falling
135
8 Press Vigorously and Thoroughly
137
Photos follow page
150
9 Playing for Keeps
153
Epilogue
282
Notes
285
Source
315
Index
325
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About the author (2010)

Tracy Campbell is professor of history and co-director of the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center at the University of Kentucky. His numerous books include Short of the Glory: The Fall and Redemption of Edward F. Prichard Jr.; Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition, 1742minus;2004; and The Gateway Arch: A Biography.

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