A timely reassessment of Woodrow Wilson and his role in the long national struggle for racial equality and women's voting rights.
More than a century after he dominated American politics, Woodrow Wilson still fascinates. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality and women's suffrage. The Wilson that emerges is a man superbly unsuited to the moment when he ascended to the presidency in 1912, as the struggle for women's voting rights in America reached the tipping point.
The first southern Democrat to occupy the White House since the Civil War era brought with him to Washington like-minded men who quickly set to work segregating the federal government. Wilson's own sympathy for Jim Crow and states' rights animated his years-long hostility to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which promised universal suffrage backed by federal enforcement. Women demonstrating for voting rights found themselves demonized in government propaganda, beaten and starved while illegally imprisoned, and even confined to the insane asylum.
When, in the twilight of his second term, two-thirds of Congress stood on the threshold of passing the Anthony Amendment, Wilson abruptly switched his position. But in sympathy with like-minded southern Democrats, he acquiesced in a "race rider" that would protect Jim Crow. The heroes responsible for the eventual success of the unadulterated Anthony Amendment are brought to life by Christopher Cox, an author steeped in the ways of Washington and political power. This is a brilliant, carefully researched work that puts you at the center of one of the greatest advances in the history of American democracy.
'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' So said author Douglas Adams - but what if there was a way of making deadlines work for you and using them to ensure others provide you with what you want when you want it?
In Christopher Cox's brilliant new book, he looks at the impact deadlines have on us, and how we can use them to deliver the best results for all parties. Social scientists have revealed that most negotiations run right up to the deadline before a deal is finally struck. What they also discovered was that this deadline effect usually results in a worse deal for both parties. Cox shows you how, instead, the deadline effect can be used to bring about success not failure.
The truth is that most of us think of deadlines all wrong. They aren't immutable laws of nature; they are a game we can play - and win. This book will show you the strategies different workplaces have come up with to do just that. They are the businesses and individuals who are rehabilitating the deadline effect, taking the urgency it provides and jettisoning all the down-to-the-wire nonsense. Based on his own experience as a magazine commissioning editor, where coaxing writers to deliver on time is an art form, he also embeds himself in other businesses, such as a ski patrol ahead of the first day of the winter season, to see how they meet deadlines that cannot be missed.
Above all, this book is an argument to embrace the power of deadlines. When time is limited, people are less wasteful, more focused, productive and creative. It's a liberating realisation: excellence and timeliness are not at odds, and the deadline effect can be highly effective.
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