num_pages: 628
description: Stevenson's oratory during the 1952 campaign was such that, as Richard N. Goodwin later wrote, "After he spoke, no leader of his party nor the dialogue of democracy itself would ever sound the same again....He told an entire generation that there was room for intelligence and idealism in public life, that politics was not just a way to live but a way to live greatly, that each of us might share in the passions of the age."Stevenson's own words during that campaign--in letters, speeches, and press conferences--are presented in Volume IV of The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson: "Let's Talk Sense to the American People," 1952-1955. It shows Stevenson vigorously crisscrossing the country after accepting his party's draft, eloquently speaking out on such issues as foreign policy and trade, civil rights, the atom bomb, Communism and Communist-hunters, the economy and fiscal responsibility, and Indochina. The volume also covers the years immediately succeeding his defeat, when resuming the same grueling schedule, he fought strongly and successfully to rebuild the Democratic party and elect a Democratic Congress in 1954, all the while devoting his best efforts to combating drift and complacency in the federal government and to playing the characteristic role of "the conscience in politics."Written in his familiar style--witty, pungent, sharp, free of pomposity--illustrated with sixteen photographs, these papers brilliantly demonstrate how Stevenson carried out his philosophy that "candidates for important offices, let alone for the Presidency of the United States in this age and day, should not treat us as fourteen-year-olds but as adults, challenging us, in the ancient tradition of all civilized people, with the assumption that we should and can and will respond to the appeal of reason and imagination."When completed these projected eight volumes of The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson will constitute a documentary biography of Stevenson and, at the same time, a documentary history, in his own words, of the extraordinary and often bewildering changes that remolded the United States and the world during his lifetime -- from 1900 to 1965.Volume V will deal with Governor Stevenson's "tour of self-education" in Asia and the Middle East in 1953.
language: English
title: The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, Vol. 4: "Let's Talk Sense to the American People": 1952-1955
titlecomplete: The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, Vol. 4: "Let's Talk Sense to the American People": 1952-1955
characters: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson II
series: The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson
publisher: Little Brown & Company