Four Hats in the Ring or Society of the Spectacle

Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics

Author: Lewis L Gould

Imagine a presidential election with four well-qualified and distinguished candidates and a serious debate over the future of the nation! Sound impossible in this era of attack ads and strident partisanship? It happened nearly a century ago in 1912, when incumbent Republican William Howard Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt running as the Progressive Party candidate, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs all spoke to major concerns of the American people and changed the landscape of national politics in the bargain.

The presidential election of 1912 saw a third-party candidate finish second in both popular and electoral votes. The Socialist candidate received the highest percentage of the popular vote his party ever attained. In addition to year-round campaigning in the modern style, the 1912 contest featured a broader role for women, two exciting national conventions, and an assassination attempt on Roosevelt's life. The election defined the major parties for generations to come as the Taft-Roosevelt split pushed the Republicans to the right and the Democrats' agenda of reform set them on the road to the New Deal.

Lewis L. Gould, one of America's preeminent political historians, tells the story of this dramatic race and explains its enduring significance. Basing his narrative on the original letters and documents of the candidates themselves, he guides his readers down the campaign trail through the factional splits, exciting primaries, tumultuous conventions and the turbulent fall campaign to Wilson's landslide electoral vote victory in November.

It's all here—Gene Debs's challenge to capitalism, the progressive rivalry ofRoosevelt and Robert La Follette, the debate between the New Freedom of Wilson and the New Nationalism of Roosevelt, and the resolve of Taft to defeat his one-time friend TR and keep the Republican Party in conservative hands. Gould combines lively anecdotes, the poetry and prose of the campaign, and insights into the clash of ideology and personality to craft a narrative that moves as fast as did the 1912 election itself.

Americans sensed in 1912 that they stood at a turning point in the nation's history. Four Hats in the Ring demonstrates why the people who lived and fought this significant election were more right than they could ever have known.

This book is part of the American Presidential Elections series.

What People Are Saying

Michael Kazin
This shrewdly argued and beautifully crafted volume illuminates the enduring significance of the 1912 race. The best book ever written about one of the more intelligent campaigns in U.S. history. (Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan)

John Morton Blum
The best informed and most trenchant study of this election yet published. Fluent, lucid, authoritative, it resounds with the politics of the Progressive era. (John Morton Blum, author of The Republican Roosevelt)

John Milton Cooper
At long last, the 1912 election has the history it deserves. A splendid book. (John Milton Cooper, Jr., author of The Warrior and the Priest: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson)

Michael Kazin

This shrewdly argued and beautifully crafted volume illuminates the enduring significance of the 1912 race. The best book ever written about one of the more intelligent campaigns in U.S. history. (Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan)

John Morton Blum

The best informed and most trenchant study of this election yet published. Fluent, lucid, authoritative, it resounds with the politics of the Progressive era. (John Morton Blum, author of The Republican Roosevelt)

John Milton Cooper Jr.

At long last, the 1912 election has the history it deserves. A splendid book. (John Milton Cooper, Jr., author of The Warrior and the Priest: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson)

Table of Contents:

Editors' Foreword     vii
Author's Preface     ix
Prologue: The New Year-1912     xv
Progressive Politics, 1909-1910     1
Prelude to the Presidential Race, 1911     22
Roosevelt versus Taft in 1912     45
Woodrow Wilson against the Democratic Field     76
A Socialist Celebrity Runs for President     103
The Bull Moose Challenge to the Major Parties     122
The Clash of Ideas     151
Epilogue     184
Appendixes     189
Notes     197
Bibliographic Essay     223
Index     229

See also: Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 Quicktorial or Korea under Siege 1876 1945

Society of the Spectacle

Author: Guy Debord

Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth cenlury. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.