Description
To understand Ohio politics is to understand American politics, a truth proven every two years in national elections. And no journalist has written more astutely or with greater zest about politics in the Buckeye State than Abe Zaidan. For more than forty years, he covered what could be called an age of giants, a tumultuous era dominated by larger-than-life politicians like the irrepressible Governor James Rhodes and by such wrenching events as the shootings at Kent State University.
Drawn from over three thousand news stories, columns, and feature articles written between 1964 and 2004, Portraits of Powerpresents ninety essays that, in Zaidan’s witty and vivid style, shed light on this fascinating period of Ohio politics. Readers who lived through those years will be transported back to critical junctures in their lives, while those who did not will have a better understanding of the forces that helped to shape their world. Portraits of Power is not only the “first draft of history.” In Abe Zaidan’s shrewd and polished prose, it is also political literature that has outlasted the cause of its occasion.
About the authors
Abe Zaidan
Abe Zaidan has been a professional journalist and freelance writer for more than forty years. He was the Ohio correspondent for the Washington Post, as well as a political columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal. Zaidan was part of the Akron Beacon Journal’s team that covered the May 4 shootings at Kent State University in 1970, and his articles helped the newspaper earn a Pulitzer Prize.
John C. Green
John C. Green is the director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, a post he has held since 1988. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron. Dr. Green received his PhD in Political Science from Cornell University in 1983 and his BA in Economics from the University of Colorado in 1975. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Green has done extensive research on American religion and politics, political parties, and Ohio politics. He is author of The Faith Factor, coauthor of Buckeye Battleground: Ohio, Campaigns, and Elections in the Twenty-First Century, and editor of The State of the Parties, now in its seventh edition. Dr. Green is a respected analyst of American and Ohio politics, and is widely quoted in the news media.
