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Overview"""In an era when American leadership seems sunk in petty power struggles and shallow media spectacles, some of our icons have much to teach us about the forms of leadership that can still speak to the democratic possibilities of the American people,"" writes Bruce Miroff. In Icons of Democracy, Miroff looks at how nine American leaders have either successfully encouraged or undermined citizens' participatory role in their democracy and helps us rediscover what leadership has meant in the past and how it can reinvigorate public life today. In a blend of history, biography, political science, and political theory, Miroff offers examples of the finest democratic leadership as well as cautionary tales of prominent leaders whose styles were essentially aristocratic. His study examines John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eugene V. Debs, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., as leaders who embodied or advanced democratic ideals. He also presents iconoclastic analyses of Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, in which he concludes that these leaders actually discouraged a truly participatory democracy. In addition, in a new preface to this edition he criticizes Bill Clinton as a postmodern leader more concerned with political fashion than democratic vision." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Bruce MiroffPublisher: University Press of Kansas Imprint: University Press of Kansas Edition: New edition Dimensions: Width: 15.80cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.50cm Weight: 0.621kg ISBN: 9780700610181ISBN 10: 0700610189 Pages: 440 Publication Date: 22 May 2000 Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General , Undergraduate Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Awaiting stock  The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you. Table of ContentsReviewsThrough a vivid and telling chronicle of nine emblematic public figures, Bruce Miroff has produced a challenging new picture of the American political tradition, warning us against our wish for heroes and showing us how our finest statesmen have helped to expand our democratic vistas. Every serious student of American politics will want to read this book. --James Miller, New School for Social Research and author of Democracy Is in the Streets A provocative meditation on the commitments and deceptions of leadership in the U.S. --Publishers Weekly This would make an excellent textbook for a college-level class on leadership in American politics. --ALA Booklist We have too few books of this sort today. . . . It merits the wide audience it seeks and alerts us to the virtues of sometimes taking that audience to be one of fellow citizens rather than fellow historians. --Robert B. Westbrook, American Historical Review A most impressive work [and] major contribution to the study of American politics. --Michael A. Genovese, American Political Science Review Through a vivid and telling chronicle of nine emblematic public figures, Bruce Miroff has produced a challenging new picture of the American political tradition, warning us against our wish for heroes and showing us how our finest statesmen have helped to expand our democratic vistas. Every serious student of American politics will want to read this book. --James Miller, New School for Social Research and author of Democracy Is in the Streets Packed with telling anecdotes and insights, Icons of Democracy offers analyses of diamond-like brilliance. --James MacGregor Burns, author of Leadership Miroff (Political Science/SUNY at Albany; Pragmatic Illusions, 1976) thoughtfully examines the lives of nine disparate American leaders, seeking to read from their stories the possibilities, limitations, and dangers of American political leadership. Miroff fits his subjects into four paradigmatic categories: aristocratic leaders of the early republic, like Hamilton and John Adams, strong-willed elitists who led passive followers; their modern successors, heroic leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and JFK, who, in distinctive ways, wielded power like kings; the democratic leaders like Lincoln and FDR, who balanced personal styles of leadership with a commitment to increasing the democratic enfranchisement of the American people; and the dissenters, like Eugene Debs, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who, in resisting the prevailing order, sought to bring politically powerless groups into civic life. While each category has its own particular advantages and disadvantages, Miroff is most wary of the aristocratic and heroic styles, finding them contradictory to the democratic promise of American society. He sees the democratic leaders as paradoxical; his study of Lincoln reveals the President's overweening ambition and unconscious assumption of superiority, which was balanced by a determination to remain close to the people while educating them to the demands of American liberty. Similarly, Miroff finds that the democratically idealistic FDR oversaw the expansion of government and the establishment of a militarized state. Miroff concludes that the dissenters - who, unlike the others, held no public office - did the most to empower women, working people, and African-Americans, and thus most fully revealed the potential for a public life of democratic honors. Miroff ably demonstrates the paradoxes that lie at the heart of leadership, and shows how the noblest qualities of our best leaders can be a threat to democracy. (Kirkus Reviews) Author InformationTab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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