Icons of democracy

"Bruce Miroff looks at how nine American leaders - John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eugene V. Debs. Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy have either successfully encouraged or undermined citizens' participatory role in the it democracy and helps us rediscover what leadership has meant in the past and how it can reinvigorate public life today.

In a blend of history, biography, political science, and political theory, he offers examples of the finest democratic leadership as well as cautionary tales of prominent leaders whose styles were essentially aristocratic."--BOOK JACKET.