In A Legacy of Leadership, top scholars and journalists create a new framework for understanding the contributions governors have made to defining democracy and shaping American history.

Structured chronologically, A Legacy of Leadership places governors in contrast and comparison with one another as well as within the context of their times to show how a century of dramatic developments—war and peace, depression and prosperity—led governors to rethink and expand their positions of leadership. The nine chapters of compelling new scholarship presented here connect the experiences of dynamic individual governors and the evolution of the gubernatorial office to the broader challenges the United States has faced throughout the turbulent twentieth century. Taken together, they demonstrate how interstate cooperation became essential as governors increasingly embraced national and international perspectives to promote their own states' competitiveness.

Published for the centennial of the National Governors Association, A Legacy of Leadership is an eloquent demonstration of how, to a great extent, we live in a country that governors created.