Crucible: The President's First Year

Miller Center Studies on the Presidency

by Michael Nelson (Editor), Jeffrey L. Chidester (Editor), Stefanie Georgakis Abbott (Editor)

Is the presidency a position one must learn on the job, or can one learn from others’ experience? No common thread runs through the list of forty-five presidents; no playbook provides the answers to all the challenges a president will face. Yet even in the most unprecedented situations, history can be instructive. Drawn from the Miller Center’s First Year project--which seeks to provide a historical framework to guide future presidents and their teams in the crucial first year of a new administration-- Crucible addresses core questions of governance facing a new president, from navigating a broken political system to thriving in a changing media environment. The project’s illustrious participants--including Stephen Skowronek, Alan Taylor, Gary Gallagher, Sidney M. Milkis, H. W. Brands, William A. Galston, and Peter Wehner, among many others--explore both opportunities and challenges in key policy areas, from national security, race, and immigration to opportunity, mobility, and fiscal policy. Crucible consolidates the most salient lessons that can be drawn from both the best and the worst presidencies in American history, as well as from the many in between, to provide true insight on the most important issues facing any new president in the first year of office. Douglas A. Blackmon * Hal Brands * H. W. Brands * Robert F. Bruner * Mary Kate Cary * Jeffrey L. Chidester * Carolyn Dewar * Tom Dohrmann * Susan J. Douglas * Anita Dunn * Michael Eric Dyson * Jeffrey A. Engel * Andrew Erdmann * Michèle A. Flournoy * Jeffrey Frieden * Gary W. Gallagher * William A. Galston * Daniel J. Galvin * Stefanie Georgakis Abbott * David Greenberg * Ryan Harper * Willis Jenkins * Elaine C. Kamarck * Bruce Katz * Melvyn P. Leffler * Guian McKee * Sidney M. Milkis * Peter Morton * Michael Nelson * Patrick O’Brien * Margaret O’Mara * Orlando Patterson * Barbara A. Perry * Andrew Rudalevige * Marc Selverstone * Jeff Shesol * Stephen Skowronek * Jeremi Suri * Alan Taylor * Daniel Tichenor * Peter Wehner * Mason B. Williams * Philip Zelikow

336 pages, Hardcover

Published January 22, 2018

About the author

Michael Nelson is the Fulmer Professor of Political Science at Rhodes College. He has published multiple books, the most recent of which is Resilient America: Electing Nixon, Channeling Dissent, and Dividing Government (2014). Other recent books are The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2014, with Sidney Milkis (2015); The Presidency and the Political System, 10th ed. (2014); and The Elections of 2012 (2013). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Politics and Political Science Quarterly and in periodicals such as Virginia Quarterly Review, the Claremont Review of Books, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Although most of his articles have been about American politics and government, he also has written about C. S. Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Charles Dickens, Garrison Keillor, football, and baseball. More than 50 of these articles have been reprinted in anthologies of political science, history, and English composition. He is editor of the American Presidential Elections book series for the University Press of Kansas and is currently writing a book about the 1992 election.

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