Presidents and Place: America's Favorite Sons highlights the interrelationship between America's leading political icons and various facets of space and place, including places of birth and death as well as regional allegiances, among others. Chapters examine the legacy of relationships between presidents and place in a variety of social and cultural forms, ranging from famous political campaigns to television series to developments in tourism. Beginning with the political iconography of New York's Federal Hall in early eighteenth-century America and ending with a focus on the Republican Party's electoral relationship with the South, the interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse nature of the chapters reveals that place has more than a biographical significance in relation to US presidents.
Thomas J. Cobb is lecturer in International Relations at Coventry University Olga Akroyd is honorary researcher at University of Kent
Chapter One - Gotham Remembers: New York Presidential Commemoration from the Confederation Congress Through the Virginia Dynasty Keith J. Muchowski Chapter Two - "A Land of Pharaoh and His Plagues": John Randolph of Roanoke's Mission to Russia and the Jacksonian Presidency Olga Akroyd Chapter Three - "Just Folks?": Jack Downing, The West Wing, and the Yankee Struggle for "Real America" Jeff Smith Chapter Four - William Henry Harrison and the Making of the Politically Imagined American Midwest Wesley Bishop Chapter Five - Andrew Johnson: Reassessing the Political Impact of the Tailor from Tennessee Frederick David Gordon Chapter Six - A President's 'Pilgrimage of the Heart': Place, Ancestry, and Woodrow Wilson's 1918 Visit to Carlisle Sam Edwards Chapter Seven - "Dear Mr. President: Herbert Hoover & Harry Truman's Unique Friendship, 1945-1964" Lisa Payne Ossian Chapter Eight - "JFK in Dallas: Collective Memory, Media Events, and Don DeLillo's Libra" Laura Alvarez Trigo Chapter Nine - How Barry Goldwater Merged Arizona's "Rugged Landscape" with "Rugged Individualism" Ilias Ben Mna Chapter Ten - "I'm a Southerner": The Regional Pride and Burden of President Jimmy Carter D. Jason Berggren Chapter Eleven - Plains and Simple: The Influences of Plains, Georgia, and Small-Town Nostalgia on Jimmy Carter's Public Persona Elizabeth Rees Chapter Twelve - The Carter Mystique: The Effects of Jimmy Carter's Election on Tourism in Georgia and the South Giuliano Santangeli Valenzani Chapter Thirteen - Tennessee Over Texas: How Appalachia's Shift to Republican Primacy Predated Trump's Presidency Thomas J. Cobb Chapter Fourteen - The American South and Presidential Politics, 1964-2020 Scott E. Buchanan
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, Thomas J. Cobb and Olga Akroyd and a cast of contributors consider the places that shaped presidents and other key figures in American history. These compelling essays remind us that historical settings are more than a backdrop. -- Michael Patrick Cullinane, Dickinson State University
