Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked Hardcover - 2013

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/very good. Glued binding. Paper over boards. xvii, [1], 423, [5] pages. Illustrations, black & white. Notes. Index. Signed by author. Inscribed on title page but name of recipient inked over. Otherwise book is in very good condition. A exploration of the time period 1980 to 1986, when two great political opponents--President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill--served together for the benefit of the country. From Wikipedia: "Christopher John "Chris" Matthews (born December 17, 1945) is an American political commentator and news anchor known for his nightly hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is televised on the American cable television channel MSNBC. From 2002 to 2013, he hosted a syndicated NBC News produced panel discussion program on weekends titled The Chris Matthews Show. Matthews appears on other NBC and MSNBC programs. Matthews was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Mary Teresa (nee Shields) and Herb Matthews, a court reporter. His father was a Protestant of English and Scotch-Irish ancestry, and his mother was from an Irish Catholic family; Matthews is himself a Roman Catholic. He attended La Salle College High School. He is a 1967 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and did graduate work in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was also a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. Matthews served in the United States Peace Corps in Swaziland from 1968 to 1970 as a trade development adviser. He holds 28 honorary degrees from numerous universities and colleges, including from Washington University, Howard University, College of Holy Cross, Fordham University, [12] Villanova University and Temple University. When Matthews first arrived in Washington, D.C., he worked as a police officer with the United States Capitol Police. Subsequently, he served on the staffs of four Democratic members of Congress, including Senators Frank Moss and Edmund Muskie. In 1974, he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Pennsylvania's 4th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he received about 24% of the vote in the primary. Matthews was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter administration and later worked for six years as chief of staff to longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O'Neill, playing a direct role in many key political battles with the Reagan administration. In 2004, at the Democratic National Convention, Matthews rightly predicted that he'd "just seen the first black president." Matthews worked in print media for 15 years, spending 13 years as Washington, D.C. bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner (1987 2000) and two years as a nationally syndicated columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Matthews covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first all-races election in South Africa, and the Good Friday Peace Talks in Northern Ireland. In 1997 and 1998, his research in the National Archives produced a series of exclusives on the Nixon presidential tapes. Matthews has covered American presidential election campaigns since 1988. In 1997, Matthews began his own talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which originally aired on CNBC but is currently on MSNBC. Hardball features pundits and elected officials as guests. In 2002, The Chris Matthews Show began airing in syndication. The show is formatted as a political roundtable consisting of four journalists and Matthews, who serves as the moderator. He is estimated to earn more than $5 million a year. He also wrote a book called Hardball. His bestselling books also include Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, American: Beyond Our Grandest Notion. His new book, Tip and The Gipper: When Politics Worked is published by Simon and Schuster. It chronicles the rivalry between the Democratic speaker of the House and the conservative U.S. president. In 2013, Matthews announced that he had signed a long-term contract extension with MSNBC but that he would no longer host The Chris Matthews Show in order to focus his efforts on Hardball, writing books, and producing documentaries.