The Power of the American Presidency, 1789–2000. By Michael A. Genovese. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 273p. $19.95. Presidential Power: Forging the Presidency for the Twenty-First Century Edited. by Robert Y. Shapiro, Martha Joynt Kumar, and Lawrence R. Jacobs. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 525p. $49.50

Extract

It has been more than forty years since the publication of Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (1960). In that seminal work Neustadt rebuffed systemic, legal, and constitutional approaches to emphasize the personal basis of presidential power and the centrality of presidents' reputation and persuasive skills. Michael Genovese's book and the collection assembled by Shapiro, Kumar, and Jacobs are timely and useful additions to the reevaluation of the individual and institutional bases of presidential power, influence, and leadership across time. If scholarship on the presidency is at a crossroads, these works invite us to journey in different analytical directions.