Up 'Til Now; A Memoir Hardcover - 1987

San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 22 cm. xi, [1], 273, [1] pages. Index. Corner of several pages had been bent. McCarthy examines the dominating and influencing ideas of the 40-year period following the end of World War II: the ideological distinction between the free world and the Communist world, the new influence on human rights protected and promoted by civil power, and the disposition to look to procedures and reforms as a solution to almost every problem. Eugene Joseph McCarthy (March 29, 1916 - December 10, 2005) was an American politician, writer, and academic from Minnesota. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the United States Senate from 1959 to 1971. McCarthy sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1968 election, challenging incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti-Vietnam War platform. McCarthy unsuccessfully ran for U.S. president four more times. He was a plaintiff in the landmark campaign finance case Buckley v. Valeo. McCarthy, the New York Civil Liberties Union, philanthropist Stewart Mott, the Conservative Party of New York State, the Mississippi Republican Party, and the Libertarian Party were the plaintiffs in Buckley, becoming key players in killing campaign spending limits and public financing of political campaigns. In 1980, dismayed by the abject failure of Jimmy Carter's presidency (he later said that "he was the worst president we ever had"), he appeared in a campaign ad for Libertarian candidate Ed Clark and wrote the introduction to Clark's campaign book. He eventually endorsed Ronald Reagan for president. In his memoir, Senator McCarthy discusses his "political initiation" and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Senatorial Politics, Presidential Politics, and his summary views of politics.