Starting Over: A Political Biography of George Allen

Starting Over traces the remarkable political career of former Virginia Governor and U.S. Senator George Allen. Once considered a likely presidential candidate, Allen became a YouTube sensation after a slip of the tongue. But the Allen story is not over and his career has featured multiple returns from seeming oblivion. The author provides a balanced look at Allen's successes and failures. George Allen's career also parallels the ups and downs of modern American conservatism. Allen reinvented conservative political action in the post-Reagan, post-Cold War era. The issues on which he had his greatest successes became the issues that fueled the Republican comeback in the 1990s. In these pages, the reader will learn as much about recent American politics as about Allen himself.

Edward A. Lynch, PhD, is John P. Wheeler Professor of Political Science at Hollins University. He is author of The Cold War's Last Battlefield: Reagan, the Soviets, and Central America and numerous other works on U.S. foreign policy in the developing world.