Roll call: One Year in the United States Senate

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. 344, [6] p.; 24 cm. Comlilments card and publisher's ephemera laid in. Index. From Wikipedia: "William Sebastian Cohen (born August 28, 1940) is an author and American politician from the U.S. state of Maine. A Republican, Cohen served as both a member of the United States House of Representatives and Senate, and as Secretary of Defense (1997 2001) under Democratic President Bill Clinton. Cohen was born in Bangor, Maine. His mother, Clara (nee Hartley), was of Protestant Irish ancestry, and his father, Reuben Cohen, was a Russian Jewish immigrant; the two owned the Bangor Rye Bread Co. After graduating from Bangor High School in 1958, Cohen attended Bowdoin College, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin in 1962. Cohen attended law school at the Boston University School of Law, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree cum laude in 1965. After graduating from law school, Cohen earned partnership in a Bangor law firm. He became an assistant county attorney for Penobscot County (1968 1970). In 1968 he became an instructor at Husson College in Bangor, and later was an instructor in business administration at the University of Maine (1968 1972). Cohen was elected to the Bangor City Council (1969 1972) and served as Bangor Mayor in 1971-72. In the 1972 election, Cohen won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Maine's 2nd congressional district, succeeding Democrat William Hathaway, who was elected to the US Senate. During his first term in Congress, Cohen became deeply involved in the Watergate investigation. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he was one of the first Republicans to break with his party, and voted for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. After three terms in the House, Cohen was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978, defeating William Hathaway in his first bid for reelection. He was reelected in 1984 and 1990, serving a total of 18 years in the Senate (1979 1997). In 1994 Cohen investigated the federal government's process for acquiring information technology, and his report, Computer Chaos: Billions Wasted Buying Federal Computer Systems, generated much discussion. He chose not to run for another Senate term in 1996; While in the Senate, Cohen served on both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Governmental Affairs Committee (1979 1997) and was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee 1983 1991 and again 1995 1997. He also participated in the drafting of several notable laws related to defense matters, including the Competition in Contracting Act (1984), the Montgomery G.I. Bill Act (1984), the Goldwater-Nichols Act (1986), the Intelligence Oversight Reform Act (1991), the Federal Acquisition Reform Act (1996), and the Information Technology Management Reform Act, also known as the Clinger-Cohen Act (1996). After retiring from the Senate, Cohen was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the position of Secretary of Defense during Clinton's second term, from 1997 to 2001. This appointment was rare because it was one of the few political appointments that crossed party lines in recent history. As Secretary of Defense Cohen played a large role in directing the United States military actions in Iraq and Kosovo, including the dismissal of Wesley Clark from his post as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander. Both Operation Desert Fox in Iraq and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo were launched just months after al-Qaeda carried out the United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998. After confirmation by a unanimous Senate vote, Cohen was sworn in as the 20th Secretary of Defense on January 24, 1997. After leaving the Pentagon in 2001, Cohen founded The Cohen Group, a business consulting and lobbyist firm, with three Pentagon officials, Bob Tyrer, Jim Bodner and H.K. Park. Cohen was presented with the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service by the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution on March 7, 2002 in New York City. On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White.