Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Political Science
Episode: Mark Zachary Taylor, "Presidential Leadership in Feeble Times: Explaining Executive Power in the Gilded Age" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Description: Mark “Zak” Taylor, a political scientist at Georgia Tech University, has a new book that explores the presidents of the Gilded Age, from Ulysses Grant through William McKinley. This period of presidencies is often a forgotten era, since the presidents were somewhat constrained by congressional action taken in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and then Andrew Johnson’s impeachment. But Taylor has another complex, fascinating, and lively story to tell about the presidencies of Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley. And tell it he does, in great detail, with extensive qualitative and quantitative data, sources, and info...