Books by Author Mary Stuckey

by Mary E. Stuckey
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10 books
I’m interested in how we practice politics by using language and in how the language we choose, often unintentionally, creates certain kinds of political inclusions and exclusions. In other words, I study how we create, maintain, and challenge different conceptions of community and who gets to be part of it in the US. Over my career, I’ve studied the people with power, mostly presidents; I’ve studied people who are often the targets of power, especially Indigenous peoples; and I’ve studied how power gets filtered through the political system, especially by the media. Right now, I’m editing a book on Deliberating the Declaration, which is about the various ways people, in the US and abroad, have relied on the Declaration of Independence to justify their political preferences and actions, and I’m writing one called Remembering Jefferson: Who He Was, Who We Are, about how we can see how the nation understands itself by looking at how it defines Jefferson and his legacies. Both of those should be out in time for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2016.
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For the Enjoyment of the People

The Creation of National Identity in American Public Lands
Mary E. Stuckey, 2023
This is a story about how the national parks, often considered the nation’s “best idea,” also helped to create “the nation” itself, how Americans got a sense of self from and in the national parks, and what kind of nation was created. It moves from the invention of the national parks through current controversies about the use of public lands and what it means to argue for a “public good” based on the land.

Deplorable

The Worst Presidential Campaigns from Jefferson to Trump
Mary E. Stuckey, 2021
We’ve had a lot of nasty campaigns in US history, but they haven’t all been nasty in the same ways. So, I look at a lot of these campaigns and examine why they were so awful and what we can do about preventing more of them.

Defining Americans

The Presidency and National Identity
Mary E. Stuckey, 2023
This is probably the book I’m best known for. It’s just come out in a paperback edition. It’s a discussion of how presidents have defined the US national community from Washington to the first George Bush.

The Good Neighbor

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of American Power
Mary E. Stuckey, 2013
No president governed as long as FDR and few presidents had as much influence on the nation as he did. This book offers one explanation for that influence—he understood the nation as a neighborhood, united (some) citizens with arguments about shared interests, not competing claims.

Voting Deliberatively

FDR and the 1936 Presidential Campaign
Mary E. Stuckey, 2015
Did I mention that FDR was important? One way he mattered was in helping to create the idea of “public opinion” as we think of it today. This book tells that story.

Political Rhetoric

A Presidential Briefing Book
Mary E. Stuckey, 2017
This was written for a series that is aimed at undergraduates and people who want to learn a bit about how and why presidents communicate. I condense a lot of smart thinking by smart people into what I hope is a pretty readable little book.

Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and the National Agenda

Mary E. Stuckey, 2008
This is a book about how Jimmy Carter people (and failed to do so) to consider human rights as an important factor in national policy making. It’s also a book about how presidents influence (and don’t) public opinion and national politics.

The President As Interpreter-In-Chief

Mary E. Stuckey, 1991
This is a quick study of a lot of different presidents and how they understood their job as spokespersons for the nation, which also reveals a lot about how the media see the presidency and various presidents.

Slipping the Surly Bonds

Reagan's Challenger Address
Mary E. Stuckey, 2006
This one was written for a book series that specialized in quick books on individual speeches, and this is an interesting speech because it does a lot of things (defend the space program, define the national mission, offer an almost eulogy) in a very few words.

Strategic Failures in the Modern Presidency

Mary E. Stuckey, 1997
This was written by a pretty young author, as academics go, and it certainly could have been written better (I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two about writing over time). But a book that focuses on presidential failures is a great idea and it was pretty fun to write.