The rise of a Prairie Statesman : the life and times of George McGovern / Thomas Knock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Knock, Thomas, author.

Series:

Politics and society in twentieth-century America.

Politics and society in twentieth-century America ; 121

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Presidential candidates--United States--Biography.

Presidential candidates.

Legislators--United States--Biography.

Legislators.

United States--Politics and government--1989-.

United States.

United States--Politics and government--1945-1989.

United States. Congress. Senate--Biography.

McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922-2012.

McGovern, George S.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 553 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, portraits

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Rise of a Prairie Statesman is the first volume of a major biography of the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate who became America's most eloquent and prescient critic of the Vietnam War. In this masterful book, Thomas Knock traces George McGovern's life from his rustic boyhood in a South Dakota prairie town during the Depression to his rise to the pinnacle of politics at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago where police and antiwar demonstrators clashed in the city's streets.Drawing extensively on McGovern's private papers and scores of in-depth interviews, Knock shows how McGovern's importance to the Democratic Party and American liberalism extended far beyond his 1972 presidential campaign, and how the story of postwar American politics is about more than just the rise of the New Right. He vividly describes McGovern's harrowing missions over Nazi Germany as a B-24 bomber pilot, and reveals how McGovern's combat experiences motivated him to earn a PhD in history and stoked his ambition to run for Congress. When President Kennedy appointed him director of Food for Peace in 1961, McGovern engineered a vast expansion of the program's school lunch initiative that soon was feeding tens of millions of hungry children around the world. As a senator, he delivered his courageous and unrelenting critique of Lyndon Johnson's escalation in Vietnam-a conflict that brought their party to disaster and caused a new generation of Democrats to turn to McGovern for leadership.A stunning achievement, The Rise of a Prairie Statesman ends in 1968, in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, when the "Draft McGovern" movement thrust him into the national spotlight and the contest for the presidential nomination, culminating in his triumphal reelection to the Senate and his emergence as one of the most likely prospects for the Democratic nomination in 1972.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Prologue

1. Yours, for Fixing Up This World

2. A Boy Never Gets over His Boyhood

3. A Clasping of Hands Meant Everything

4. The Best B-24 Pilot in the World

5. I Would Have to Call Him a Progressive Agrarian

6. America Was Born in Revolution against the Established Order

7. The Confused and Fear-Ridden Temper of the Times

8. What a Loss to History!

9. Washington, DC

10. The Apostle of Agriculture, Education, and Peace

11. The Quest for the Senate

12. Food for Peace

13. We Are Determining the Priorities of Our National Life

14. The Right Song for the Wrong Season

15. The Cup of Peril Is Full

16. But There Are Still People with Hope

17. The Kind of Man the Future Must Have

Epilogue: Come Home, America

Acknowledgments

A Note on Sources

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 439-500) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9781400880416

1400880416

OCLC:

937401949