John J. Williams was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946, defeating incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator James M. Tunnell. Honest John Williams: U.S. Senator from Delaware examines the political career of Williams, a political novice who established himself as an important advocate for fiscal probity and integrity in government during four successive terms in the U.S. Senate between 1947 and 1970. Over the course of those twenty-four years in the Senate, which spanned the administrations of five separate U.S. presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon), Williams positioned himself as an opponent of wasteful government spending and corruption, often working ‘across the aisle’ in order to achieve specific political goals. In Honest John Williams, noted Delaware historian Carol E. Hoffecker offers readers a comprehensive look at the legislative course forged by Delaware’s first four-term senator, a chicken-feed dealer born on a farm near Sussex County who went on to become an important advocate for fiscal probity and integrity in twentieth-century American politics.

Carol E. Hoffecker is a former Richards Professor of History at the University of Delaware, where she taught classes in U.S History, Urban History, and Women’s History. During her time at the University of Delaware, she helped to shape and promote university goals by serving as the president of the Faculty Senate in the 1980s, Chair of the Department of History (1983 – 1985), and as Associate Provost for Graduate Studies (1988 – 1995). She retired after three decades in 2003. In addition to Honest John Williams: U.S. Senator from Delaware, Hoffecker has written a number of other books on Delaware history, including Wilmington: A Pictorial History, Delaware: A Bicentennial History, Federal Justice in the First State, and Beneath Thy Guiding Hand: A History of Women at the University of Delaware.