Provides an informative introduction to the life, times, and key achievements of William Howard Taft while including step-by-step directions that allow readers to draw what they are learning.

The only president to later serve as chief justice of the United States, William Howard Taft remarked in the 1920s that "I don't remember that I ever was President." Historians have agreed, and Taft is usually portrayed, when written about at all, as nothing more than a failed chief executive. In this provocative new study, the first treatment of the Taft presidency in four decades, Lewis L. Gould presents a compelling assessment of Taft's accomplishments and setbacks in office. Rich in human interest and fresh analysis of the events of Taft's four years in Washington, Gould's book shows why Taft's presidency is very much worth remembering on its own terms. Gould argues that Taft wanted to be president and had an ambitious agenda when he took power in March 1909. Approaching his duties more as a judge than as a charismatic executive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft soon found himself out of step with public opinion. Gould shows how the Payne-Aldrich Tariff and the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy squandered Taft's political capital and prepared the ground for Democratic victories in the elections of 1910 and 1912. His seamless narrative provides innovative treatments of these crucial episodes to make Taft's presidency more understandable than in any previous account. On Canadian Reciprocity, Dollar Diplomacy, and international arbitration, Gould's well-researched work goes beyond earlier stale clichs about Taft's administration to link his tenure to the evolution of the modern presidency. Taft emerges as a hard-working but flawed executive who lacked the excitement of Theodore Roosevelt or the inspiration of Woodrow Wilson. The break with Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 doomed the Taft presidency, and Gould supplies an evenhanded analysis of the erosion of their once warm friendship. At bottom, the two men clashed about the nature of presidential power, and Gould traces with insight how this personal and ideological rupture influenced the future of the Republican party and the course of American politics. In Gould's skilled hands, this neglected presidency again comes alive. Leaving the White House in 1913, Taft wrote that "the people of the United States did not owe me another election." What his presidency deserved is the lively and wise appraisal of his record in office contained in this superb book.

The only man to serve as president and chief justice, who approached every decision in constitutional terms, defending the Founders’ vision against new populist threats to American democracy William Howard Taft never wanted to be president and yearned instead to serve as chief justice of the United States. But despite his ambivalence about politics, the former federal judge found success in the executive branch as governor of the Philippines and secretary of war, and he won a resounding victory in the presidential election of 1908 as Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked successor. In this provocative assessment, Jeffrey Rosen reveals Taft’s crucial role in shaping how America balances populism against the rule of law. Taft approached each decision as president by asking whether it comported with the Constitution, seeking to put Roosevelt’s activist executive orders on firm legal grounds. But unlike Roosevelt, who thought the president could do anything the Constitution didn’t forbid, Taft insisted he could do only what the Constitution explicitly allowed. This led to a dramatic breach with Roosevelt in the historic election of 1912, which Taft viewed as a crusade to defend the Constitution against the demagogic populism of Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Nine years later, Taft achieved his lifelong dream when President Warren Harding appointed him chief justice, and during his years on the Court he promoted consensus among the justices and transformed the judiciary into a modern, fully equal branch. Though he had chafed in the White House as a judicial president, he thrived as a presidential chief justice.

William Howard Taft declared, "I am sure the automobile coming in as a toy of the wealthier class is going to prove the most useful of them all to all classes, rich and poor." Unlike his predecessors, who made public their disdain for the automobile, Taft saw the automobile industry as a great source of wealth for this country. The first president to acquire a car in office (Congress granted him three automobiles), Taft is responsible for there being a White House garage in 1909. This is a meticulously researched reappraisal of the oft-maligned Taft presidency focusing particularly on his cars, his relationship to the automobile and the role of the automobile in the politics of his day. Appendices provide information on the White House garage and stable, Taft's speech to the Automobile Club of America and a glossary of terms and names.

Supreme Court justices have long relied on law clerks to help process the work of the Court. Yet few outside the Court are privy to the behind-the-scenes bonds that form between justices and their clerks. In Of Courtiers and Kings, Todd C. Peppers and Clare Cushman offer an intimate new look at the personal and professional relationships of law clerks with their justices. Going beyond the book’s widely acclaimed predecessor, I n Chambers, the vignettes collected here range from reflections on how serving as clerks at the Supreme Court impacted the careers of such justices as Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, William Rehnquist, John G. Roberts Jr., and John Paul Stevens to personal recollections written by parents and children who have both served as Supreme Court clerks. While individual essays often focus on a single justice and his or her corps of clerks—including how that justice selected and utilized the clerks—taken as a whole the volume provides a macro-level view of the evolution of the role of the Supreme Court law clerk. Drawing on a rich repository of such anecdotes, insights, and experience, the volume relates in a clear and accessible style how the clerking function has changed over time and what it is like for law clerks to be witnesses to history. Offering a rare glimpse into a normally unseen world, Of Courtiers and Kings reveals the Court’s increasing reliance on law clerks and raises important questions about the selection, utilization, and influence of law clerks. Praise for In Chambers: "An excellent book.... It's interesting for many different reasons, not the least of which as a reminder of how much of a bastion of elitism the Court has always been."—Atlantic Monthly "The best parts of the book are the behind-the-scenes descriptions of life at the court.... [A]n impressive and comprehensive book."—Associated Press

A biography of William Howard Taft, the twenty-seventh president of the United States and the only person to serve in both that office and as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Essays by presidential scholars, Washington insiders, and Dan Quayle discuss the past, present and future of the job John Adams called "the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." Chapters discuss men chosen because of their native states or their political acumen, but not their leadership abilities; the tragic stories of Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Spiro Agnew; the vice presidency as defined by Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Mondale, George Bush, and Dan Quayle; and Richard E. Neustadt's analysis of the nucleus of vice presidential power--proximity to the president. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The president is arguably the most recognized and powerful individual in the United States. This reference work explores the American presidency in relation to issues of race concerning the African American community. This work provides a contemporary and refreshing examination of the American presidency through the prism of race and race relations in America, revealing a long and complicated relationship between the U.S. presidency and the African American community. The book evaluates each of the forty-five American presidents' policies, cabinet appointments, and handling of race matters in the United States. Following an extensive timeline, chronological chapters take an incisive look at each American president's life and career as well as the policies enacted during his presidency that affected the African American community. The presidents' personal writings, memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies frame their views on the issue of race and how they dealt with it before, during, and after their presidency.

From the era of the industrial factory to the age of the microchip, Pivotal Tuesdays explores four twentieth-century elections—1912, 1932, 1968, and 1992—using the election of the American president as a lens through which to explore the broader sweep of the nation's social, economic, and political history.

In William Howard Taft’s Constitutional Progressivism Kevin J. Burns makes a compelling case that Taft’s devotion to the Constitution of 1787 contributed to his progressivism. In contrast to the majority of scholarship, which has viewed Taft as a reactionary conservative because of his constitutionalism, Burns explores the ways Taft’s commitment to both the Constitution and progressivism drove his political career and the decisions he made as president and chief justice. Taft saw the Constitution playing a positive role in American political life, recognizing that it created a national government strong enough to enact broad progressive reforms. In reevaluating Taft’s career, Burns highlights how Taft rejected the “laisser [sic] faire school,” which taught that “the Government ought to do nothing but run a police force.” Recognizing that the massive industrial changes following the Civil War had created a plethora of socioeconomic ills, Taft worked to expand the national government’s initiatives in the fields of trust-busting, land conservation, tariff reform, railroad regulation, and worker safety law. Burns offers a fuller understanding of Taft and his political project by emphasizing Taft’s belief that the Constitution could play a constructive role in American political life by empowering the government to act and by undergirding and protecting the reform legislation the government implemented. Moreover, Taft recognized that if the Constitution could come to the aid of progressivism, political reform might also redound to the benefit of the Constitution by showing its continued relevance and workability in modern America. Although Taft’s efforts to promote significant policy-level reforms attest to his progressivism, his major contribution to American political thought is his understanding of the US Constitution as a fundamental law, not a policy-oriented document. In many ways Taft can be thought of as an originalist, yet his originalism was marked by a belief in robust national powers. Taft’s constitutionalism remains relevant because while his principles seem foreign to modern legal discourse, his constitutional vision offers an alternative to contemporary political divisions by combining political progressivism-liberalism with constitutional conservatism.