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Republican, First, Last, and Always: A Biography of B. Carroll Reece
Author(s): Suzanne Bowers (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 3 Jun. 2010
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 225 pages
- ISBN-10: 1443819166
- ISBN-13: 9781443819169
Book Description
Republican, First, Last, and Always: A Biography of B. Carroll Reece examines the political culture that created an intense fervor of anti-communism in America. From 1920 to 1961, B. Carroll Reece served a then unprecedented thirty-five years in the United States House of Representatives. A close friend of Robert Taft, Reece served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1946–1948 and used his position as chairman to push anti-communism to the forefront of the Republican Party’s national agenda and to help Taft try to win the presidency. His background in finance and economics led him to believe that capitalism remained America’s strongest defense against communism. He worked to eradicate any threat to the capitalist system―from trying to block government development of the Muscle Shoals Dam projects in Alabama in the 1920s to forming a congressional committee that attacked foundations created by the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie families in the 1950s. Reece’s downfall and death represented the demise of Old Guard conservatives within the Republican Party as new leaders and new issues became the center of Republican politics, and his investigation contributed to the animosity towards foundations and large concentrations of wealth that continues today.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Bowers’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of the conservative anti-Communist movement of the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Congressman B. Carroll Reece of East Tennessee was a figure of considerable significance in that movement, but until now he has been neglected by historians. Bowers has thoroughly mined the available sources, especially Reece s voluminous personal papers. Her extensive research in those sources and her wide reading in the historiography of the era enable her to offer a full and engaging portrait of both the public man and the private man and to situate him in the context of his times. This book should be read by everyone interested in mid-twentieth-century American politics. –Professor Stephen V. Ash, Distinguished Professor in Humanities, University of Tennessee, USA
About the Author
F. Suzanne Bowers earned her PhD from the University of Tennessee in 2007 and has a Masters Degree in public management from East Tennessee State University. Currently, Suzanne is a Lecturer at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
