Description: A Floridian who served as a U.S. senator from 1950 to 1968, George Armistead Smathers is generally regarded as a playboy politician who wasted his opportunities to achieve legal and political brilliance, abandoning his constituency to represent business, industry, and other wealthy interests in Florida. This detailed chronicle of Smather's life and career reveals that his reputation was sensationalized and largely undeserved.

Brian Lewis Crispell incorporates lively anecdotes and personal descriptions, in addition to details culled from research in newspapers, interviews, and the archives of Kennedy, Johnson, Truman, and Smathers himself, to bring the largely unstudied senator to life. The work traces Smather's political path from the forming of his "statewide collection of loyal men, " a gathering of supporters from the University of Florida who formed his political base, through his election to the ??? successful 1950 Senate campaign against Claude Pepper, and his senatorial career during the beginning of ??? civil rights ??? and the early Cold War. Crispell highlights the senator's moderate civil rights record, his role in the 1960 presidential election, and his international list position on aid to Latin America. This thoroughly researched account presents Smathers as the ??? "Cold Warrior" -- a man who significantly ??? his political world.

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