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“Not since Harry Truman succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt twenty-nine years earlier had the American people known so little about a man who had stepped forward from obscurity to take the oath of office as President of the United States.”
—from Chapter 4

This is a comprehensive narrative account of the life of Gerald Ford written by one of his closest advisers, James Cannon. Written with unique insight and benefiting from personal interviews with President Ford in his last years, Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Lifeis James Cannon’s final look at the simple and honest man from the Midwest.

Journalists offer a daily dose of commentary sizing up the president's successes and failures, profoundly influencing the public's perceptions of presidential performance. This study shows how leading journalists developed their perceptions of Gerald Ford, the criteria they employed in evaluating his presidency, and the nature and impact of their assessments of his leadership. In The Press and the Ford Presidency, political scientist Mark J. Rozell uses a qualitative content analysis to investigate the national press coverage of the Ford administration. He explores the complicated relationship between what presidents say and do and how their words and deeds are portrayed in the elite press, demonstrating not only how press valuations vary over time, but also how certain impressions of a president take hold and resist change, even in light of conflicting evidence. Rozell shows that a president and presidential image-crafters cannot script their own press coverage and expect journalists dutifully to follow the White House plan. Journalists have identifiable expectations of presidential leadership and performance. Indeed, Gerald Ford consistently fell short of these expectations, leading the media and, consequently, the public to resort to humiliating caricature when describing the president and his programs.The Press and the Ford Presidency will be of special value to schools of the presidency mass media and politics, political communications, and political leadership. In addition, since the author's research included interviews with numerous numbers of Ford's White House staff, the book will appeal to scholars interested in oral history and to historians of the Watergate era and the Ford years.

In the shadow of Watergate and the Vietnam War, Gerald Ford’s presidency has long been dismissed as little more than an interim administration. Yet the administration and its British counterparts worked to manage economic crises, Cold War tensions, and international flashpoints, while also harnessing cultural diplomacy to sustain transatlantic partnership. Drawing on newly declassified archival sources and fresh historical analysis, The Ford Administration and Anglo-American Relations shows how Ford’s years in office (1974–77) were pivotal in reshaping the US–UK special relationship at a moment of global turbulence.

Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the authors examine eight dimensions of Anglo-American relations under Ford: the inheritance of transatlantic tensions from the Nixon era; cultural and societal links beyond the state; the significance of Ford’s personal diplomacy; negotiations over defense and security; transformations in international economic relations and the birth of the G6/G7; cooperation through multilateral institutions such as NATO and the UN; joint management of crises in Cyprus and Rhodesia to the sterling currency crisis; and the cultural diplomacy of the 1976 Bicentennial, when Queen Elizabeth II’s state visit symbolized renewed unity between former adversaries. By highlighting both the challenges and the resilience of Anglo-American ties, this book recasts a neglected presidency as a crucial bridge between the crises of the Nixon years and the celebrated Reagan–Thatcher era. Accessible yet deeply researched, it is a work that will appeal to anyone interested in how two nations, facing uncertainty at home and abroad, turned to multilateral cooperation, culture, and public diplomacy to navigate the upheavals of the 1970s.