Bridging the Divide: My Life
by Edward Brooke

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Summary of Bridging the Divide: My Life

"Senator Brooke's story shows the kind of effective, authentic leadership our nation hungers for today. He broke through lines of race, creed, and class to unite Americans in the pursuit of justice and defeated the Radical Right at critical moments in our history-sometimes single-handedly."-Ralph G. Neas, President of People for the American Way

"Real Power is often exercised behind the scenes. In the U.S. Congress, the scene is the Conference between the House and Senate. There, Senator Ed Brooke was a true master, molding a consensus between left and right. People who seek to make the world a better place can learn much from his story, told here for the first time as one of the nation's quiet, but brilliant history makers of the twentieth century."-Andrew Young, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

"In an eloquent and forthright style, Senator Ed Brooke leads us through the extraordinary story of his life-from the grandson of a slave to the first popularly elected African American senator. It is a story that does honor to both the senator and the country he served for so many years."-Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm

President Lyndon Johnson never understood it. Neither did President Richard Nixon. How could a black man, a Republican no less, be elected to the United States Senate from liberal, Democratic Massachusetts--a state with an African American population of only 2 percent? The mystery of Senator Edward Brooke's meteoric rise from Boston lawyer to Massachusetts attorney general to the first popularly elected African American U.S. senator with some of the highest favorable ratings of any Massachusetts politician confounded many of the best political minds of the day. This articulate and charismatic man burst on the national scene in 1966 when he ran for the Senate.

His story encompasses the turbulent post-World War II years, from the gains of the civil rights movement, through the riotous 1960s, to the dark days of Watergate, with stories of his relationships with the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and future senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Brooke also speaks candidly of his personal struggles, including his bitter divorce from his first wife and, most recently, his fight against cancer.

African-American & Black Books

• Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > African-American & Black
• Leaders & Notable People > Political
• Memoirs
• Regional U.S. > New England
• History > Africa