From the preeminent presidential scholar and acclaimed biographer of historical figures including George Washington, Herbert Hoover, and Nelson Rockefeller comes this eye-opening life of Gerald R. Ford, whose presidency arguably set the course for post-liberal America and a post-Cold War world. For many Americans, President Gerald Ford was the genial accident of history who controversially pardoned his Watergate-tarnished predecessor, presided over the fall of Saigon, and became a punching bag on Saturday Night Live. Yet as Richard Norton Smith reveals in a book full of surprises, Ford was an underrated leader whose tough decisions and personal decency look better with the passage of time. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Smith recreates Ford's hardscrabble childhood in Michigan, his early anti-establishment politics and lifelong love affair with the former Betty Bloomer, whose impact on American culture he predicted would outrank his own. As president, Ford guided the nation through its worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War and broke the back of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression--accomplishing both with little fanfare or credit (at least until 2001 when the JFK Library gave him its prestigious Profile in Courage Award in belated recognition of the Nixon pardon). Less coda than curtain raiser, Ford's administration bridged the Republican pragmatism of Eisenhower and Nixon and the more doctrinaire conservatism of Ronald Reagan. His introduction of economic deregulation would transform the American economy, while his embrace of the Helsinki Accords hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. Illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photos, this definitive biography, a decade in the making, will change history's views of a man whose warning about presidential arrogance ("God help the country") is more relevant than ever.

Ordinary Man, An: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

Biographies & Memoirs

Smith, Richard Norton

Historical

Harper

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

Harper Paperbacks

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, BOOKLIST, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS • From acclaimed historian Richard Norton Smith comes the definitive life of an American icon: Nelson Rockefeller—one of the most complex and compelling figures of the twentieth century. Fourteen years in the making, this magisterial biography of the original Rockefeller Republican draws on thousands of newly available documents and over two hundred interviews, including Rockefeller’s own unpublished reminiscences. Grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, Nelson coveted the White House from childhood. “When you think of what I had,” he once remarked, “what else was there to aspire to?” Before he was thirty he had helped his father develop Rockefeller Center and his mother establish the Museum of Modern Art. At thirty-two he was Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime coordinator for Latin America. As New York’s four-term governor he set national standards in education, the environment, and urban policy. The charismatic face of liberal Republicanism, Rockefeller championed civil rights and health insurance for all. Three times he sought the presidency—arguably in the wrong party. At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964, locked in an epic battle with Barry Goldwater, Rockefeller denounced extremist elements in the GOP, a moment that changed the party forever. But he could not wrest the nomination from the Arizona conservative, or from Richard Nixon four years later. In the end, he had to settle for two dispiriting years as vice president under Gerald Ford. In On His Own Terms, Richard Norton Smith re-creates Rockefeller’s improbable rise to the governor’s mansion, his politically disastrous divorce and remarriage, and his often surprising relationships with presidents and political leaders from FDR to Henry Kissinger. A frustrated architect turned master builder, an avid collector of art and an unabashed ladies’ man, “Rocky” promoted fallout shelters and affordable housing with equal enthusiasm. From the deadly 1971 prison uprising at Attica and unceasing battles with New York City mayor John Lindsay to his son’s unsolved disappearance (and the grisly theories it spawned), the punitive drug laws that bear his name, and the much-gossiped-about circumstances of his death, Nelson Rockefeller’s was a life of astonishing color, range, and relevance. On His Own Terms, a masterpiece of the biographer’s art, vividly captures the soaring optimism, polarizing politics, and inner turmoil of this American Original. Praise for On His Own Terms “[An] enthralling biography . . . Richard Norton Smith has written what will probably stand as a definitive Life. . . . On His Own Terms succeeds as an absorbing, deeply informative portrait of an important, complicated, semi-heroic figure who, in his approach to the limits of government and to government’s relation to the governed, belonged in every sense to another century.”—The New Yorker “[A] splendid biography . . . a clear-eyed, exhaustively researched account of a significant and fascinating American life.”—The Wall Street Journal “A compelling read . . . What makes the book fascinating for a contemporary professional is not so much any one thing that Rockefeller achieved, but the portrait of the world he inhabited not so very long ago.”—The New York Times “[On His Own Terms] has perception and scholarly authority and is immensely readable.”—The Economist

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

Random House]

Presents an intimate account of Washington during his presidency, recounting his struggle to contain the conflicts in his cabinet (especially the celebrated feud between Jefferson and Hamilton) and to keep the new nation out of Europe's influence. 25,000 first printing.

Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation

Houghton/Mifflin

For most of his varied and colorful career, Colonel Robert R. McCormick was the self-proclaimed emperor of "Chicagoland," a Middle America of his own imagination, forever at odds with the alien East and the flaky West. From the 1920s through the mid-1950s, he was editor and owner of the Chicago Tribune, a joyously combative conservative broadsheet that under his leadership grew to become the most widely read full-size daily in the United States. To admirers he was the scourge of bleeding-heart liberals, an emblem of the Old Order in the age of the New Deal. To detractors he was a half-crazed demagogue whose personal exploitation of a powerful news medium was a flagrant abuse of the public trust. In fact, he was all this -- and more. Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Tribune, The Colonel is the first biography to draw on McCormick's personal papers. Richard Norton Smith has written a vivid, candid, sympathetic life of an American original, a lifelong controversialist whose outspoken views, for better and for worse, shaped the political temper of his times. "I was determined to lead a great life, an exotic life," McCormick wrote, and for once he was guilty of understatement. Patterning himself on his grandfather Joseph Medill, he found fame as a municipal reformer, cleaning up Chicago's water supply. During World War I, he was the sole American correspondent to accompany the Russian Army; later, as an officer of the U.S. First Division, he fought with distinction in the Battle of Cantigny. He was a strident isolationist whose hobby was military strategy, an implacable anglophobe who adored a good fox hunt, a finger-pointing moralist whose private life bordered on the scandalous. As owner-editor of the Tribune, he was a ruthless competitor, yet he was also a First Amendment absolutist who effectively, even heroically, defended the press from government coercion. At the height of his power, he oversaw an empire whose holdings included not only the Tribune but also the New York Daily News, the Washington Times-Herald, a large chunk of Canada, and "the most beautiful office building in the world," Chicago's Tribune Tower. Richard Norton Smith tells McCormick's story with humor, verve, and an eagle eye for revealing detail. Here is McCormick exposing the fiscal crimes of Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, investigating the gangland murder of a corrupt reporter, and holding Henry Ford up to ridicule in "the trial of the century." Here is McCormick at his most indomitable, at war with his nemesis, FDR, who sought unsuccessfully to indict him for treason. The Colonel is a story by turns amazing, amusing, and appalling. As Smith remarks of McCormick's Tribune, it will provoke its readers "to spasms of outrage punctuated by laughter."

The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick 1880-1955

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, BOOKLIST, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS • From acclaimed historian Richard Norton Smith comes the definitive life of an American icon: Nelson Rockefeller—one of the most complex and compelling figures of the twentieth century. Fourteen years in the making, this magisterial biography of the original Rockefeller Republican draws on thousands of newly available documents and over two hundred interviews, including Rockefeller’s own unpublished reminiscences. Grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, Nelson coveted the White House from childhood. “When you think of what I had,” he once remarked, “what else was there to aspire to?” Before he was thirty he had helped his father develop Rockefeller Center and his mother establish the Museum of Modern Art. At thirty-two he was Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime coordinator for Latin America. As New York’s four-term governor he set national standards in education, the environment, and urban policy. The charismatic face of liberal Republicanism, Rockefeller championed civil rights and health insurance for all. Three times he sought the presidency—arguably in the wrong party. At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in 1964, locked in an epic battle with Barry Goldwater, Rockefeller denounced extremist elements in the GOP, a moment that changed the party forever. But he could not wrest the nomination from the Arizona conservative, or from Richard Nixon four years later. In the end, he had to settle for two dispiriting years as vice president under Gerald Ford. In On His Own Terms, Richard Norton Smith re-creates Rockefeller’s improbable rise to the governor’s mansion, his politically disastrous divorce and remarriage, and his often surprising relationships with presidents and political leaders from FDR to Henry Kissinger. A frustrated architect turned master builder, an avid collector of art and an unabashed ladies’ man, “Rocky” promoted fallout shelters and affordable housing with equal enthusiasm. From the deadly 1971 prison uprising at Attica and unceasing battles with New York City mayor John Lindsay to his son’s unsolved disappearance (and the grisly theories it spawned), the punitive drug laws that bear his name, and the much-gossiped-about circumstances of his death, Nelson Rockefeller’s was a life of astonishing color, range, and relevance. On His Own Terms, a masterpiece of the biographer’s art, vividly captures the soaring optimism, polarizing politics, and inner turmoil of this American Original. Praise for On His Own Terms “[An] enthralling biography . . . Richard Norton Smith has written what will probably stand as a definitive Life. . . . On His Own Terms succeeds as an absorbing, deeply informative portrait of an important, complicated, semi-heroic figure who, in his approach to the limits of government and to government’s relation to the governed, belonged in every sense to another century.”—The New Yorker “[A] splendid biography . . . a clear-eyed, exhaustively researched account of a significant and fascinating American life.”—The Wall Street Journal “A compelling read . . . What makes the book fascinating for a contemporary professional is not so much any one thing that Rockefeller achieved, but the portrait of the world he inhabited not so very long ago.”—The New York Times “[On His Own Terms] has perception and scholarly authority and is immensely readable.”—The Economist From the Hardcover edition.

Random House Audio |

This is the first full-scale biography of Thomas E. Dewey - the famous gangbuster of the thirties, twice candidate for president, a maker of the modern Republican party, the key behind-the-scenes strategist of both Dwight Eisenhower's and Richard Nixon's Presidential nominations. On whatever level he acted, Thomas Dewey made government work, as he made the judicial system work when, as the famous New York district attorney, he rounded up the city's most powerful and infamous gangsters. He was ruthless as well as imaginative, ambitious as well as able. Dewey's record deserves to be known and his personality explored. Richard N. Smith has done both, against the backdrop of the political and economic desperation that launched Dewey to national prominence while he was still in his early thirties. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times profiles the system as well as a man who worked within it. Dewey was a creative adapter and his achievements and his failures say a great deal about the appeal of men "who get things done."

Thomas E. Dewey and His Times

Leaders & Notable People

Simon&Schuster

This is the first full-scale biography of Thomas E. Dewey - the famous gangbuster of the thirties, twice candidate for president, a maker of the modern Republican party, the key behind-the-scenes strategist of both Dwight Eisenhower's and Richard Nixon's Presidential nominations. On whatever level he acted, Thomas Dewey made government work, as he made the judicial system work when, as the famous New York district attorney, he rounded up the city's most powerful and infamous gangsters. He was ruthless as well as imaginative, ambitious as well as able. Dewey's record deserves to be known and his personality explored. Richard N. Smith has done both, against the backdrop of the political and economic desperation that launched Dewey to national prominence while he was still in his early thirties. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times profiles the system as well as a man who worked within it. Dewey was a creative adapter and his achievements and his failures say a great deal about the appeal of men "who get things done." (Courtesy of Goodreads.com)

Covers the period when Hoover overcame his defeat by FDR and carved out a role for himself in the isolationist campaigns preceeding World War II and during the Korean conflict

An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover

History

Americas

SIMON AND SCHUSTER

The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation

This history of Harvard from its days as a religiously based academy to its unparalleled status today examines the university's changing character and traces in detail the tenure of Harvard's last five presidents, beginning in 1869

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Richard Norton. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Smith, Richard Norton

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Smith, Richard Norton. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Ordinary Man, An: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation

The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick 1880-1955

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller

Thomas E. Dewey and His Times

Thomas E. Dewey and His Times

An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover

The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation