At the start of the 20th century, the United States faced significant and wrenching changes: rapid industrialization, the growth of corporations, a widening gap between rich and poor, abuse of power, and corruption in both government and business. In her sprawling and richly rewarding new book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin skillfully demonstrates how two presidents of the era dealt with these major domestic challenges. She shows how one president came to be regarded as a great leader, while the other fell short. Her compelling narrative also explains the crucial role played in this period by legendary investigative journalists.

At the center of Goodwin’s story are two close friends who became president: Theodore Roosevelt, then vice president, assumed the office in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley; William Howard Taft was elected in 1908 after service as the key member of Roosevelt’s cabinet and with Roosevelt’s enthusiastic support. Goodwin describes the private lives of the two men and their families in significant detail to give readers a better understanding of their close ties and their sudden and bitter break in 1912.

Roosevelt and Taft were temperamentally quite different, as were their approaches to leadership. From early in his political career, Roosevelt was aware of the importance of the press in public leadership. He placed strong reliance on “the bully pulpit," the phrase he coined to describe his use of the presidency to make the public aware of issues and to seek their support for appropriate action. He courted muckraking journalists, especially those with McClure’s, the leading progressive publication of the time.

The journalists brought together by “genius” publisher and editor Sam McClure included Ida Tarbell, who is probably best known for revealing the predatory and illegal practices of Standard Oil; Ray Stannard Baker, whose work included exposing how a small circle of private owners controlled the country’s transportation network; and Lincoln Steffens, whose outstanding series on municipal and state corruption inspired reformers throughout the country. McClure believed that, “The story is the thing,” and he gave his reporters time to do extensive research before publishing their articles. Roosevelt kept up with what they were doing, invited them to visit him and used their work in preparing legislation and writing speeches.

Goodwin notes that perhaps the biggest surprise in her research was that Taft “was a far more sympathetic, if flawed, figure than I had realized.” She shows how Taft, as secretary of war and in other ways, was TR’s most important cabinet member. Whenever the president was away, Taft was considered the “acting president.” Even before joining the cabinet, Taft had been widely praised as a judge, solicitor general of the U. S. and governor general of the Philippines. When Roosevelt ran for president in his own right, Taft was the most requested surrogate for the president on the campaign trail. Yet despite these achievements, Taft’s judicial temperament, aversion to dissension and preference for personal persuasion led him to work within the system rather than mobilize external pressure.

Although the investigative reporters offered to help him, Taft admitted that he was “derelict” in his use of the bully pulpit. Even his weekly press conferences became a chore and he stopped doing them. Timing is important in politics, and Roosevelt’s ideals were always moderated by his pragmatism and his ability to shrewdly calculate popular sentiment. Antitrust suits are an example of the Taft-Roosevelt difference in this regard. Roosevelt was popular as the nation’s “trustbuster,” while Taft was frequently criticized for doing the same thing. Goodwin points out that “Taft had actually instituted more antitrust suits than his predecessor.” But the populace had changed and wanted the government to prevent the formation of monopolies in the first place; it was seen as mean-spirited to litigate after the fact.

Goodwin excels at capturing the relationship between personalities and government policy in a turbulent period. The three interwoven strands of her story—Roosevelt, who expanded the role of government in American life and transformed the presidency; Taft, a cabinet member so crucial to Roosevelt’s success, yet temperamentally unsuited to be an effective president himself; and Roosevelt’s use of “the bully pulpit,” especially through his relationships with McClure’s investigative journalists—make for compelling reading.

Flowing down from the north country of Minnesota and pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, the mighty Mississippi River drifts along, carrying with it not only the silty detritus of the mud, leaves and pollutants it picks up along its journey but also the legends of pirates, wily boatsmen and confidence men that writers and musicians have memorialized in song and story.

Awash in the glory of the Mississippi, author Paul Schneider bathes us in the river's rise and fall. Old Man River, his new history of the river, carries us along the currents of its natural history from the last ice age through various wars to conquer, possess and inhabit the territory around it, and up through modern times, including attempts by the Army Corps of Engineers to re-chart the course of the river and by conservationists to save the river from dying. As he traces this history, Schneider recounts tales of the many Native American nations that called the river and its delta home, the earliest meetings of Spanish explorers with these tribes, the exit of the Spanish, the entrance of the French and English, and the eventual American takeover of the river and its surrounding territories following the Revolutionary War and particularly the Civil War. Schneider describes the Civil War as "the final great conflagration of the long line of wars for control of the basin that began with de Soto's fleeing army creatures centuries before."

Weaving his own journeys down the river in kayaks and aluminum boats into this larger history, Schneider swimmingly propels us through the beauty of the many headwaters, streams, creeks and eddies that compose the greater Mississippi. Traveling down the Allegheny, for example, the river pulls him into itself: "After a few days of travel, watching it widen and grow from something awkward and crooked into something curving and lovely, it took a part of me."

While the waters of the great river still contain runoff pollution from cornfields and livestock operations, it is now cleaner, thanks to the Clean Water Act, and wildlife flourishes again in many places along the river. However, attempts to change the course of the river continue. After the great flood of 1927, the Army Corps built the Old River Control Structure in an effort to keep the river flowing in its banks; when the 1970 flood almost wiped out the structure, Congress built another one.

As Charley Pride reminds us, the Mississippi River rolls on, and it's a place to come when the "world's spinning round, too fast for me." Schneider's graceful tale allows the power, beauty and grace of the mighty river to wash over us, too.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is known as the Great Dissenter because of his notable dissents as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, yet he did not generally like to dissent. He would sometimes return an opinion from another justice with a note saying that although he disagreed with his colleague on the issue he would not say so publicly. He did not want to be a source of friction and felt that a public dissent might confuse the public and reflect negatively on the credibility of the Court.

His reluctance to dissent makes what is often thought to be his most important dissent—perhaps even the most important minority opinion in American legal history—all the more remarkable. And that it should be about the First Amendment and free speech, a subject on which he had always previously sided with the conservative members of the Court, makes it even more unusual. In this case, Abrams v. United States, Holmes proposed an expansive interpretation of the First Amendment that would protect all but the most immediately dangerous speech. Thomas Healy describes how Holmes’ personal and intellectual transformation came about in his superb new book, The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind—and Changed the History of Free Speech in America.

The prevailing legal understanding about free speech in the U.S. in the early 20th century was the so-called Blackstonian view, named for William Blackstone, the preeminent English jurist of the 18th century. In a nutshell, it said that individuals did not need government approval before they spoke, but once they did speak or write something they could be jailed or fined for even the most innocuous statements. Progressive thinkers and activists thought this was too restrictive: Why call it free speech if you could be subject to punishment for anything you said or wrote?

Healy does an excellent job in bringing Holmes, a complex and fascinating man, to life. He was an outstanding legal scholar, an eloquent writer, a Civil War veteran, and very well read; he had been a solidly conservative judge both in Massachusetts and on the Supreme Court, to which he was appointed in 1902. Surprisingly, he was open to the friendship of much younger men whom he respected, and he enjoyed discussing ideas with them, although he had little sympathy for the progressive causes and social reforms they supported. This group included Felix Frankfurter, Walter Lippmann and Holmes’ favorite, Harold Laski, who taught history at Harvard. Healy shows, in some detail, how these men, along with the help of Judge Learned Hand and Holmes’ Supreme Court colleague Louis Brandeis, among others, were able to change Holmes’ views. They engaged him in personal conversations and in letters. They recommended books and articles to him that slowly brought him to a more liberal view of free speech. Laski also introduced Holmes to Zechariah Chafee Jr., a Harvard law professor who had been critical of Holmes’ earlier free speech rulings and was instrumental in changing the justice’s mind.

Healy takes us through the 17 months of intellectual exploration and emotional growth, wartime hysteria and terrorist plots leading up to the famous dissent. He masterfully guides us through related cases that the Supreme Court decided during this period and explains why the 12 paragraphs of Holmes’ carefully reasoned and eloquently expressed dissent were and remain so important. A key point Holmes emphasized is that, since we can never be sure that we are right about everything, we should gather as much information as we can. To do that, he believed there must be, as he put it, “free trade in ideas.”

This is an important book, written for the general public, about how one Supreme Court justice reached a crucial decision that continues to influence cases dealing with free speech today. Healy is a law school professor who has also been a Supreme Court correspondent for the Baltimore Sun. He has written extensively about free speech, the Constitution and the federal courts. The Great Dissent succeeds as outstanding personal, intellectual and legal history.

At its peak, during and after the Second World War, American manufacturing was much like the country as a whole: full of can-do spirit and open to most anyone willing to jump in and work hard, with plentiful rewards for all. Most of this work took place in what we now call the Rust Belt—the area spanning the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest—and the entire U.S. saw the benefits of their labor. When the party ended decades later, it left behind abandoned cities, polluted land and water, poverty and bitterness. But there are seedlings of renewal being planted as you read this, in the hopes that the economy can be revived and, this time, built to last. Nothin’ But Blue Skies traces that history and looks at what possibilities the future holds.

Author Edward McClelland (Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President) spends time in Chicago; Cleveland; Flint, Michigan; and other sites where industry once ruled. He kayaks a length of the Cuyahoga River, which famously caught fire as a result of industrial pollution. A look at Michael Moore’s propagandist journalism shows how it brought attention to the auto plant shutdowns in Michigan while skirting the truth, which helped Moore far more than any auto workers. He’s not to blame for their troubles, though. McClelland writes that by the time General Motors began its decline, “GM engineers were trying to design an autoworker who earned $2 an hour, never got sick, and died on retirement day.”

There are plenty of places to point fingers in this history. Every innovation that streamlines production ultimately leads to lower workforce requirements. Unions in some cases went from fighting for fairness on the job to forcing companies to pay amounts that couldn’t be sustained over time. Environmental regulations cramped the style of some factory owners, leading to an exodus of jobs overseas.

We’re living in the aftermath of all this right now, and while it’s far from ideal, Nothin' But Blue Skies does find a few signs of hope. Detroit is notable for creating urban farms in the midst of a “food desert,” an area unserved by anything but convenience stores. And American auto manufacturing is slowly adapting to our new environmental reality and building more fuel-efficient vehicles. Nothin’ But Blue Skies at times offers a grim take on our history, but it falls to us to write the next chapter.

Abraham Lincoln regarded the Emancipation Proclamation as “the central act of my administration and the great event of the nineteenth century” because it “knocked the bottom out of slavery.” He announced the Proclamation in September of 1862 and signed it into law in January of 1863. Like most decisions Lincoln made during his presidency, it was controversial both to those in sympathy with the Proclamation, because it was too narrow (for example, it did not address slavery in loyal areas), and to those opposed, who felt it went too far. But the decree led to constitutional amendments that outlawed slavery completely and recognized men and women who had been freed as equal citizens. Many other of Lincoln’s decisions in that tumultuous year of 1862 had both long-term and short-range consequences for the future of the nation.

In Rise to Greatness, David Von Drehle guides us through the year chronologically and makes a strong case for his view that it was “the most eventful year in American history and perhaps the most misunderstood.” Among other things, it was the year the Civil War became a cataclysm and the Confederacy came as close to winning the war as it ever would. The country was transformed by advances in ways of communication, transportation, education and industrial growth. Most importantly, the author says, it was the year “Abraham Lincoln rose to greatness.”

Von Drehle’s compelling narrative details the tightrope that Lincoln walked. It is important to remember that Lincoln’s generation of political leaders had grown up in a country where the possibility of disunion was always present but each time a compromise had always averted war. Many felt that the way to hold the country together was to avoid the issue of slavery as much as possible. But that was not to be this time. Lincoln dealt with political and military realities each day. For the latter responsibilities, he taught himself enough to become a competent, but by no means flawless, strategist. Von Drehle devotes much space to the crucial conflict between Lincoln and General George McClellan, who consistently found reasons, or excuses, to keep his troops out of action when potential Union victories would help win the war and raise morale. McClellan, who aspired to the presidency himself (and was the nominee of the Democrats in 1864), attributed any setbacks he suffered to insufficient support from the Lincoln administration.

Politically, Lincoln used every bit of his judgment, cunning and pragmatism to hold the Union together. One of the most effective strategies was his use of patronage to give all of the factions in the country a stake in the success of the Union forces. Some political leaders did have military experience, others did not, but if Lincoln felt it would be helpful to the cause he did not hesitate to name generals regardless of experience.

Von Drehle demonstrates the pressure on Lincoln that came from every direction. In addition to pressure from political foes and friends in the U.S., the president was attentive to British and French reactions and the possibility of their intervention on the side of the Confederacy, not least because of the economic suffering the war caused across the Atlantic. Only late in the year did this concern diminish.

On top of everything else, Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd, remained grief-stricken over the death of their son Willie on February 12, his father’s 53rd birthday. Another son, Tad, was also seriously ill but recovered. Lincoln also had to deal with his wife’s excessive spending and her attempts to cover it up.

Von Drehle, the author of the acclaimed and award-winning Triangle, has written a well-researched and thoroughly engaging exploration of how Lincoln met the overwhelming challenges of a crucial year in the nation’s history.