Winning Back America

by Howard Dean

Overview

GOVERNOR HOWARD DEAN'S GRASSROOTS BID FOR THE PRESIDENCY IS GENERATING EXCITEMENT IN EVERY CORNER OF AMERICA.
In Winning Back America, Governor Dean writes for the first time about his life and the people and events that have shaped him, beginning with his upbringing in New York and taking us through his medical career, eleven and a half years as governor of Vermont, and finally into his presidential campaign. Howard Dean writes about:
• The years at college that changed the way he looks at America
• His decision to attend medical school and the origins of his commitment to children and to universal health care
• Meeting his wife, Judith Steinberg, and bringing up a family in Vermont
• One dramatic day that he began as an internist and ended as governor
• The successes of his governorship
• His decision to run for president of the United States
• His vision for the country
Winning Back America is Howard Dean in his own words. Dean tells his story with characteristic verve and forthrightness and also with emotion as he reflects on the death of his father and on the disappearance of his brother Charlie in Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War.
Howard Dean's personal recollections bring us a full portrait of the candidate as a father, a husband, a son, and as a political leader.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743255714
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	12/03/2003
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Governor Howard Dean is a physician who previously shared a medical practice with his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg. He became governor of Vermont in 1991 and served until 2003. He campaigned for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election and served as honorary chairman of Democracy for America, an organization dedicated to building a grassroots network for the Democratic Party. He is currently the chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Read an Excerpt

Winning Back America

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By Howard Dean

Simon & Schuster

Copyright © 2003 Howard Dean
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0743255712

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Introduction

In order to achieve everything we want to achieve, we have to stand up for what we believe in again. Standing up for what we believe means standing together. Restoring the American community is not something that can be done from a podium, or by any person, whether or not he or she is a candidate for public office; it is a goal that requires the active participation in our communities by each of us.

President Bush said time and time again in 2000 that he was "a uniter, not a divider," yet nothing could be further from the truth. His has been a policy of domestic division, and he has sought to advance his political agenda by dividing the American people by race, by gender, by sexual orientation, and by income. Dividing the American people against ourselves is not a sound foundation for governing; and in the end, if we allow such tactics of division to continue, we will not only have lost ground on the issues that we care about, we will have lost a fundamental characteristic of what it means to be an American -- the notion that we are all in this together.

On June 23, 2003, as I took the stage on Church Street in downtown Burlington to announce my presidential campaign, I was buoyed by the presence of so many family members, friends, and colleagues. I was thrilled that Vermont's Senators Pat Leahy and Jim Jeffords were there, too. Senators Leahy and Jeffords are terrific people. Pat is one of the consciences of the Senate; as chair of the Judiciary Committee, he fended off a number of inappropriate judicial nominees; he also was responsible for including "sunset clauses" in some of the more onerous parts of the Patriot Act.

Jim Jeffords became a national legend for his willingness to stand up to the president's radical agenda. When Jim left the Republican Party, largely out of frustration with the president's failure to fulfill his promises on education, he exhibited a true Vermont trait -- the willingness to do what is right, even when faced with the toughest opposition.

On that stunning early-summer day, I stood in front of more than thirty thousand Americans who had gathered in Burlington and, via the Internet, across the country. Much had changed in the year since I had first begun to travel around the country, listening to the concerns of my fellow Americans, understanding our shared fears, hopes, and aspirations. In many ways, that speech on June 23 was the culmination of what I had learned in a year of listening to the American people.

We were united that day in Vermont and throughout America, and we have been united in common cause and in ever-greater numbers since June 23. Our cause is the Great American Restoration -- the restoration of our ideals, of our communities, and of our nation's traditional role as a beacon of hope in the world. All of these have been endangered by the policies of the Bush administration, but the people of America have extraordinary power, and when the American people work together, in common cause, there is nothing that we cannot achieve.

Copyright © 2003 by Howard Dean

Continues...

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Excerpted from Winning Back America by Howard Dean Copyright © 2003 by Howard Dean. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

In a book that is part autobiography and part political manifesto, former Vermont governor Howard Dean reviews his eventful life in medicine and politics and presents his stand on the important issues facing our country.

bn.com

"I talk as simply and directly to people as possible," claims Dean, and though his official campaign biography-cum-manifesto is notable for its plainspokenness, it mostly lacks the passionate forcefulness the front-running Democratic candidate has shown on the campaign trail. The toning down appears deliberate; not only does Dean apologize for intemperate remarks, he goes out of his way to describe himself as a nonradical during his late '60s college years and compares his fiscal outlook to that of his "moderate business-oriented Republican" father. (He also has kind words for President Bush and his family, though he turns critical on the subject of the president's aides.) The account of his childhood and college years is bland, the result of downplaying his family's wealth. A feeling of enthusiasm doesn't set in until his decision to enroll in medical school, perhaps because this is also the period when he met his wife. Dean's flat facade also cracks in passages recalling the circumstances of his older brother's capture (and probable execution) by the Pathet Lao in Laos in 1974. Obliquely touching on the emotional effects of this trauma on his family, Dean also discusses how it has increased his reluctance to send American soldiers into combat and put their families through the same process. The final sections of the book veer away from the personal to the political, and much of its rhetoric will be instantly recognizable to anyone who's seen a Dean stump speech, possibly frustrating those who want to learn more deeply about the man and what he stands for. (Dec.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly