In this insightful study, Paul Y. Hammond, an experienced analyst of bureaucratic politics, adapts and extends that approach to explain and evaluate the Johnson administration’s performance in foreign relations in terms that have implications for the post–Cold War era.

The book is structured around three case studies of Johnson’s foreign policy decision making. The first study examines economic and political development. It explores the way Johnson handled the provision of economic and food assistance to India during a crisis in India’s food policies. This analysis provides lessons not only for dealing with African famine in later years but also for assisting Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The second case study focuses on U.S. relations with Western Europe at a time that seemed to require a major change in the NATO alliance. Here, Hammond illuminates the process of policy innovation, particularly the costs of changing well-established policies that embody an elaborate network of established interests. The third case study treats the Vietnam War, with special emphasis on how Johnson decided what to do about Vietnam. Hammond critiques the rich scholarship available on Johnson’s advisory process, based on his own reading of the original sources.

These case studies are set in a larger context of applied theory that deals more generally with presidential management of foreign relations, examining a president’s potential for influence on the one hand and the constraints on his or her capacity to control and persuade on the other. It will be important reading for all scholars and policymakers interested in the limits and possibilities of presidential power in the post–Cold War era.

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

In the letters of 1905–1909, Roosevelt’s “big stick” carries increasing weight at home and abroad. These are the years of the fleet’s cruise around the world, of trust-busting and railroad regulation and currency control, and the building of the Panama Canal. They include the Panic of 1907, “Nature Faking,” conservation, the choice of a successor, and the bitter conflict between President and Congress in the closing days of the administration.

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

In the letters of 1905–1909, Roosevelt’s “big stick” carries increasing weight at home and abroad. These are the years of the fleet’s cruise around the world, of trust-busting and railroad regulation and currency control, and the building of the Panama Canal. They include the Panic of 1907, “Nature Faking,” conservation, the choice of a successor, and the bitter conflict between President and Congress in the closing days of the administration.

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

In the letters of 1901–1905, Roosevelt consolidates his position as President and party leader, settles the coal strike, deals with the politics of the Panama Canal, expands the Navy, extends the sphere of American interests abroad, achieves the Presidency in his own right, and works with the Russians and the Japanese to make the Peace in Portsmouth.

The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt constitute a major contribution to the field of American history and literature. At the same time, they present an autobiography of matchless candor and vitality. They are at once a mine of information for the historian, a case study in astute and vigorous political leadership, and a delight to the general reader. All the letters needed to reveal Roosevelt's thought and action in his public and private life are included, with appropriate editorial comment; and each is printed in its entirety.

In the letters of 1901–1905, Roosevelt consolidates his position as President and party leader, settles the coal strike, deals with the politics of the Panama Canal, expands the Navy, extends the sphere of American interests abroad, achieves the Presidency in his own right, and works with the Russians and the Japanese to make the Peace in Portsmouth.

A constitutional originalist sounds the alarm over the presidency’s ever-expanding powers, ascribing them unexpectedly to the liberal embrace of a living Constitution.

Liberal scholars and politicians routinely denounce the imperial presidency—a self-aggrandizing executive that has progressively sidelined Congress. Yet the same people invariably extol the virtues of a living Constitution, whose meaning adapts with the times. Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash argues that these stances are fundamentally incompatible. A constitution prone to informal amendment systematically favors the executive and ensures that there are no enduring constraints on executive power. In this careful study, Prakash contends that an originalist interpretation of the Constitution can rein in the “living presidency” legitimated by the living Constitution.

No one who reads the Constitution would conclude that presidents may declare war, legislate by fiat, and make treaties without the Senate. Yet presidents do all these things. They get away with it, Prakash argues, because Congress, the courts, and the public routinely excuse these violations. With the passage of time, these transgressions are treated as informal constitutional amendments. The result is an executive increasingly liberated from the Constitution. The solution is originalism. Though often associated with conservative goals, originalism in Prakash’s argument should appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike, as almost all Americans decry the presidency’s stunning expansion. The Living Presidency proposes a baker’s dozen of reforms, all of which could be enacted if only Congress asserted its lawful authority.

In a wide-ranging constitutional history of presidential war decisions from 1945 to the present, Stephen M. Griffin rethinks the long-running debate over the “imperial presidency” and concludes that the eighteenth-century Constitution is inadequate to the challenges of a post-9/11 world.

The Constitution requires the consent of Congress before the United States can go to war. Truman’s decision to fight in Korea without gaining that consent was unconstitutional, says Griffin, but the acquiescence of Congress and the American people created a precedent for presidents to claim autonomy in this arena ever since. The unthinking extension of presidential leadership in foreign affairs to a point where presidents unilaterally decide when to go to war, Griffin argues, has destabilized our constitutional order and deranged our foreign policy. Long Wars and the Constitution demonstrates the unexpected connections between presidential war power and the constitutional crises that have plagued American politics.

Contemporary presidents are caught in a dilemma. On the one hand are the responsibilities handed over to them by a dangerous world, and on the other is an incapacity for sound decisionmaking in the absence of interbranch deliberation. President Obama’s continuation of many Bush administration policies in the long war against terrorism is only the latest in a chain of difficulties resulting from the imbalances introduced by the post-1945 constitutional order. Griffin argues for beginning a cycle of accountability in which Congress would play a meaningful role in decisions for war, while recognizing the realities of twenty-first century diplomacy.