| Zachary Taylor: The American Presidents Series: The 12th President, 1849-1850 Contributor(s): Eisenhower, John S. D. (Author), Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Editor), Wilentz, Sean (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0805082379 ISBN-13: 9780805082371 Publisher: Times Books OUR PRICE: $27.00 Product Type: Hardcover Published: May 2008 Annotation: The rough-hewn general who rose to the nation's highest office, and whose presidency witnessed the first political skirmishes that would lead to the Civil War Zachary Taylor was a soldier's soldier, a man who lived up to his nickname, "Old Rough and Ready." Having risen through the ranks of the U.S. Army, he achieved his greatest success in the Mexican War, propelling him to the nation's highest office in the election of 1848. He was the first man to have been elected president without having held a lower political office.
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| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Presidents & Heads Of State - Biography & Autobiography | Historical |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 2007046073 |
| Series: American Presidents (Times) |
| Physical Information: 1" H x 5.8" W x 8.6" (0.90 lbs) 192 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 19th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The rough-hewn general who rose to the nation's highest office, and whose presidency witnessed the first political skirmishes that would lead to the Civil War Zachary Taylor was a soldier's soldier, a man who lived up to his nickname, Old Rough and Ready. Having risen through the ranks of the U.S. Army, he achieved his greatest success in the Mexican War, propelling him to the nation's highest office in the election of 1848. He was the first man to have been elected president without having held a lower political office. John S. D. Eisenhower, the son of another soldier-president, shows how Taylor rose to the presidency, where he confronted the most contentious political issue of his age: slavery. The political storm reached a crescendo in 1849, when California, newly populated after the Gold Rush, applied for statehood with an anti- slavery constitution, an event that upset the delicate balance of slave and free states and pushed both sides to the brink. As the acrimonious debate intensified, Taylor stood his ground in favor of California's admission--despite being a slaveholder himself--but in July 1850 he unexpectedly took ill, and within a week he was dead. His truncated presidency had exposed the fateful rift that would soon tear the country apart. |
Contributor Bio(s): Eisenhower, John S. D.: - John S. D. Eisenhower was a retired brigadier general, a former U.S. ambassador to Belgium, and the author of numerous works of military history and biography, including General Ike: A Personal Reminiscence; They Fought at Anzio; Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I; and So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848.Wilentz, Sean: - Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, is the author or editor of several books, including Chants Democratic and The Rise of American Democracy. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.Schlesinger, Arthur M.: - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (1917-2007) was the preeminent political historian of our time. For more than half a century, he was a cornerstone figure in the intellectual life of the nation and a fixture on the political scene. He won two Pulitzer prizes for The Age of Jackson (1946) and A Thousand Days (1966), and in 1988 received the National Humanities Medal. He published the first volume of his autobiography, A Life in the Twentieth Century, in 2000. |