All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia
In the winter of 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator from New York, ventured deep into the heart of Appalachia on what was dubbed a “poverty tour.” He toured a strip mine, visited one-room schoolhouses and dilapidated homes, and held a public hearing in a ramshackle high school gymnasium. As acting chairman of a Senate subcommittee on poverty, RFK went to Eastern Kentucky to gauge the progress of the War on Poverty.
Robert Kennedy wasn’t merely on a fact-finding mission, however; he was considering challenging Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he needed support from white voters to win it.
All This Marvelous Potential meticulously retraces RFK’s tour, visiting the places he visited and meeting with the people he met with. The similarities between then and now are astonishing: vicious, divisive politics; bitter racial strife; economic uncertainty; and environmental alarm.
Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip
From Missouri to New York and back again, this recounting of an amazing journey chronicles the road trip of a former president and his wife and their amusing, failed attempts to keep a low profile. Diners, bellhops, and cabbies shouted out “Hiya, Harry!” whenever they recognized the former president, and, out for his daily constitutional on the streets of New York, Harry even stumbled into the sidewalk shot of the newly launched Today show.
Along the way there are brief detours into relevant topics, such as the postwar American auto industry, McCarthyism, the development of the nation’s highway system, and the decline of Main Street America. By the end of the 2,500-mile journey, readers will have a new and heartfelt appreciation for America’s last citizen-president.
The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth
An extraordinary yet almost unknown chapter in American history is revealed in this extensively researched exposé. On July 1, 1893, President Grover Cleveland boarded a friend’s yacht and was not heard from for five days. During that time, a team of doctors removed a cancerous tumor from the president’s palate along with much of his upper jaw. When an enterprising reporter named E. J. Edwards exposed the secret operation, Cleveland denied it and Edwards was consequently dismissed as a disgrace to journalism. Twenty-four years later, one of the president’s doctors finally revealed the incredible truth, but many Americans simply would not believe it.