Hamilton Books
Pages: 234
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-7618-7018-0 • Paperback • February 2018 • $31.99 • (£25.00)
978-0-7618-7019-7 • eBook • February 2018 • $30.00 • (£25.00)
As a journalist, Douglas Rooks served as editorial page editor for the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, and editor and publisher of Maine Times; he has written about state government and politics for 33 years, earning numerous national and regional awards. His biography, Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible, was published in 2016 by Down East Books. A graduate magna cum laude of Colby College, he is former board president of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church, and lives with his wife in a 210-year-old farmhouse in West Gardiner.
Preface
Rise
Chapter 1 Beginning: 1954
Chapter 2 Building: 1955-65
Chapter 3 Reform Governor: 1966-74
Decline
Chapter 4 Prosperity: 1974-86
Chapter 5 Disaster: 1986-94
Chapter 6 The Long Decline: 1994-2010
Renewal
Chapter 7 Recovery
Chapter 8 A Different State
Chapter 9 The Future
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Sources
Index
Through decades of writing, Doug Rooks has chronicled, with unparalleled insight and devotion, Maine’s politics – a state that’s produced from its 1.3 million people an outsized share of leaders with national and international significance.Now, Rooks tells where these leaders came from, and in the process tells Maine’s story: its sudden metamorphosis into a two-party state; the successes of reform; recent periods of strife; and the author’s prescriptions for future progress.Throughout the world, democracies are under stress. Rooks provides a case study for how to grapple with that stress, and meet the challenges citizens face in this continuing struggle.—Former State Senator Peter Mills— Peter Mills, Former State Senator
...Rooks uses journalistic skills to bring insight and acuity, as well as refreshing clarity to this story. . . Rooks' history is an informatifve primer on Maine state politics and politicians, and explains why the public thinks politics is a high form of free entertainment.
— Kennebec Journal