8 Books Like King of the Cats

Robert C. Smith (1947-2023) was one of the most prolific political scientists who wrote about Black political leadership.

This book is a critical examination of national Black political leadership in the U.S. after the 1960s. Smith posits a thesis that after the Civil Rights Movement, Black Americans became incorporated into the Democratic Party, becoming a critical component of the party’s governing coalition. However, Smith maintains that Black political leadership also became much more mainstream, co-opted, and marginalized.

This book questions the extent to which Black Americans have made substantive policy gains since the 1960s and whether their incorporation into the political system has helped or hurt their capacity to press their demands on the political system.

Former Congressman William Clay, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, provides a historical look at Black members in the U.S. Congress from Reconstruction to 1992.

Until the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s Black members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House had been the highest-ranking Black federal officials. However, we know very little about them. Historians have largely ignored Black members of Congress.

Clay’s book is especially useful because it is partly historical and participant-observation. He chronicles and documents the experiences of America’s first Black congressional representatives who served during Reconstruction.

Readers interested in Black congressional leadership during the 1960s through the early 1990s will glean a lot from Clay’s first-hand perspective on the formation of the Congressional Black Caucus, Richard Nixon, the 1972 National Black Political Convention, and the expansion and maturation of the Black congressional delegation.

In 1972, Black politics was at a crossroads. Leonard N. Moore’s examination of the National Black Political Convention of March 1972 is a wonderful and comprehensive study of perhaps the most important political gathering of Black political leaders.

Moore’s concise and readable account of the convention is riveting and at times dramatic. The reader can feel the tension in the Gary, Indiana high school gymnasium between the disparate ideological factions of Black political leadership at the time – the Black integrationist and moderates versus the Black nationalists and radicals.

Black leaders convened in Gary to confront a central question about the future of Black politics: whether Black voters should work separately or in coalition with other racial minorities and liberal whites to advance their policy goals. 

Moore details how the coalition approach won out at the convention and connects what happened in Gary, Indiana in 1972 to the political incorporation… show more.

This biography of Louis Martin, sometimes called the “Godfather of Black Politics,” provides a brilliant portrayal of a Black political leader who worked as a close adviser to three Democratic presidents.

Louis Martin was a journalist who worked for the Chicago Defender and in 1936 became founding editor of Detroit’s Michigan Chronicle. Martin was an activist journalist. In 1944, he moved to New York to work as publicity man for the Democratic National Committee. Martin never left Democratic Party politics. He worked in the White House as a close adviser for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Jimmy Carter.

Poinsett is a good storyteller. He explores what it was like for one of the first Black Americans to be close to power as a top aide in the White House to three U.S. presidents.

Harari’s book is both insightful and inspirational for leaders in public service.

As were many commanders during that era, Powell was a Vietnam Veteran and learned much from the public policy debacle where he served valiantly. This helped him formulate the Powell Doctrine which provided strategic framework for the military operating in an American Foreign Policy environment.

Strategic planning was key in how Colin Powell dealt successfully with a very complex military operation (e.g. Desert Storm) by having overwhelming force as well as stakeholder support. The book discusses the different aspects of leadership as seen through Powell’s eyes, which is very insightful on what his vision of what characteristics a leader should possess.  

I first read Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress in a literature of science fiction course as an undergrad around 1991 and I’ve reread it a bunch of times since then. Lem’s endlessly creative wordplay and brilliant satirical style have been major influences on all of my fiction, especially the Great American series. His novel might seem less like an overt haha comedy than the others I’ve listed here, but I still laugh every time I read it. Sample sentence: “Still, the sight of a man at your side crumpling to the floor under heavy fire is not among the most pleasant, even if it is the result of a simple misunderstanding, which ends with an exchange of diplomatic notes and official apologies.”

This book is written by, IMO, the best chef ever to have served at the White House. I was fortunate to have been Chef Haller’s boss during my time at the White House. Henry retired after 21 years of flawless service and worked in the Johnston, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan White Houses. An incredible talent with a positive, pleasant temperament, everyone loved Chef Haller.

The epic, multi-volume work of one of America's great mid-century historians. An old-fashioned work of immense erudition, vivid narrative, decisive judgment. Never before or since have so many great and consequential speeches been delivered in Congress; Nevins furnishes every one of them with suitable embellishment. Vols. 2-4 (in the 8-volume version) offer wonderful set pieces on the great events of the time--the Kansas-Nebraska debate, the Dred Scott case, the rise and election of Abraham Lincoln.