Looking at the Senate today, words like courage, integrity, and honesty may not seem to apply at first blush. Especially with the recent bitter battle over health care reform, with the insurance industry buying out politicians left and right and lawmakers practically tripping over themselves to stifle reform, such virtues seem conspicuously absent. But perhaps there is more to the wheelings and dealings of political Washington than meets the eye. Such is what this book would have you believe; as Senators, though they are elected to serious political office, are still but men at their cores, and sometimes stand up with surprising courage in the face of overwhelming odds, for what they believe to be right.

The book itself, written while President Kennedy was still a senator and laid up by back surgery, is essentially nonpolitical and reads more like a history of the American Senate. President Kennedy writes about men of various political credos and backgrounds, from different points of American history and in different political climates, which performed acts of courage during their tenures in the senate. Some are well-known statesmen who have left their marks on history; John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Sam Houston… Others are virtually unknown today outside of historical senatorial accounts. The one thing that unites them is the courage they displayed under their own trying situations.

Senators, as elected officials representing their home states in federal legislature, have always been seen as beholden to the people of the states they represent. How then, would the constituents feel about a southern senator siding with the union during the Civil War, or a senator who votes against free silver during the era of depression? Many senators saw their political careers ruined with such acts of courage, whether history showed them right or not. They endured hate mail and threats against their persons from average citizens of their states, or had their political parties cast them out. Sometimes it isn’t the constituents that provide the most pressure, but the very political machine itself, such as the small group of senators who banded together against a speaker of the house who was pushing through legislation that would undermine the power of the President, or the occasional politician who ultimately would throw away political ambition by voting differently from the rest of his party. Not all of these acts of courage would have an impact on the future of our nation and not all of the senators would be proven correct in their stands at the end. But the fact remains that each stood up for what he believed in, rather than doing the most politically expedient thing at the time and this book honors them for that. I highly recommend it even for people who are not interested in politics. It’s a real eye opening book that should cause anyone who reads it to look more closely at what their politicians are doing.  It could very well be that your senator’s latest infuriating move may actually be an example of courageously forging ahead along the one road that seems right.