The Improbable Wendell Willkie Lib/E: The Businessman Who Saved the Republican Party and His Country, and Conceived a New World Order
Product Description In the wake of one of the most tumultuous conventions in Republican history, the party of Lincoln nominated in 1940 a prominent businessman and Wall Street attorney for president. Though Wendell Willkie would lose to FDR, David Levering Lewis reveals in this news-making reclamation that the story of this Hoosier-born corporate chairman's life is the story of an America that could have been. Popular for his down-home Midwestern charm and unaffected candor, Willkie possessed a supple intellect and a concealed disdain for political opportunism that, had he not died prematurely, would have revolutionized American politics with its advocacy of bipartisanship and social responsibility. Not only was he the first presidential candidate to speak before the NAACP, advocating a civil rights movement in the 1940s, but Willkie also bucked American isolationism and became the first to champion the nation's involvement in international politics. Vibrantly recounted, The Improbable Wendell Willkie affirms the legacy of an American icon. Review "Absorbing and all-too-timely...Lewis has painted a compelling portrait."-- "Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America" About the Author David Levering Lewis is University Professor at New York University and a former president of the Society of American Historians. His work reflects the mutual dependence of African and African American history, as well as the utility of biography in the exploration of American race, class, and politics. He is the recipient of fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Parkman Prize, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, his two volumes on the life of W. E. B. Du Bois won the Pulitzer Prize, the only time in the history of the award that both volumes of a biography have won. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, his M.A. from Columbia University, and his B.A. from Fisk University.