San Antonio College Library

"This book is based primarily on the recollections of eight of the 12 Texas Killer Bees: Ron Clower, Lloyd Doggett, Glenn Kothman, Raul Longoria, Oscar Mauzy, Carl Parker, Bill Patman and A.R. "Babe" Schwartz. The woman who hid nine of them, Dora McDonald, also contributed her story."--From the preface.

The U.S. Constitution has a lot to say about government and how Americans choose their leaders. But nowhere in the document is there any mention of primary elections, the process by which voters winnow down the field of candidates for president and other offices ahead of a general election. Though primary elections may seem integral to the U.S. political system, they are in fact relatively new, arising in the early 20th century to wrest power from...

"Although Howard Dean outraised his opponents in 2003, he did not develop the national organization or the institutional support necessary to secure the nomination, leaving himself vulnerable to John Kerry's 2004 surge. Drawing on numerous examples from the 2004 Democratic campaign, and detailed analyses of every contested Republican and Democratic presidential nomination race since 1976, Claiming the Mantle interprets the evolution of the presidential...

"This book rejects conventional accounts of how, and why, American political parties differ form those in other democracies. It focuses on the introduction of that most distinctive of American party devices, the direct primary, and argues that primaries resulted from a process of party institutionalization initiated by party elites. Thus, it overturns the widely accepted view that, between 1902 and 1915, direct primaries were imposed on the parties...

The exhilarating story of the four-month campaign that changed American politics forever. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt came out of retirement to challenge his close friend and handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican Party nomination. To overcome the power of the incumbent, TR seized on the idea of presidential primaries, telling bosses everywhere to "Let the People Rule." The cheers and jeers of rowdy supporters and detractors...