Ol' Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond

Bass, Jack, and Thompson, Marilyn W.

ISBN 10: 1563525232 / ISBN 13: 9781563525230

Published by Longstreet Press, Inc [c1998], Atlanta, GA, 1998

About this Item

24 cm, 359, illus., chapter notes, index, printing defect pp. 31-34 (p. 32 was slightly stuck to p. 33--no loss of text; pp. 33-34 creased) Inscribed by the author (Jack Bass). Bookseller Inventory # 55715

Bibliographic Details

Title: Ol' Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of ...

Publisher: Longstreet Press, Inc [c1998], Atlanta, GA

Publication Date: 1998

Book Condition: good, very good

Edition: First Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

The most comprehensive biography to date of America's oldest, larger-than-life, and longest serving senator.

Review:

Ol' Strom is a workmanlike, largely anecdotal biography of the oldest--and longest-serving--United States senator in American history. Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson provide a political education to younger readers who only know Thurmond as the congressional landmark who, too proud to wear a hearing aid, urges witnesses in Senate hearings to "speak into the machine." Among the book's highlights are an account of Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign, in which he carried four states and established the vitalness of the South for future aspirants to the White House (as well as firmly setting down a political platform of racial divisiveness that would set the tone for the civil rights era a decade later), and his successful 1954 write-in campaign for the Senate seat he's held ever since. There's also plenty of detail concerning Thurmond's legendary sexual appetite: he was so notorious in Washington that Lyndon Johnson forbade his daughter to go out with him. (She was in high school; he just a few years shy of 60.) Another Senate colleague got off perhaps the best one-liner summing up the Thurmond mystique: "When he dies, they'll have to beat his pecker down with a baseball bat in order to close the coffin lid." Reading Ol' Strom, you won't doubt that assessment for a single second. --Ron Hogan