Desk 88 (Used Hardcover) - Sherrod Brown

Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a scuffed-up wooden desk with a proud history. In Desk 88 he tells the story of eight of the senators who were there before him. Despite their flaws and the setbacks they faced, each one made a decisive contribution to the creation of a more just America. They range from Hugo Black, the onetime Ku Klux Klansman who helped lift millions of black and white American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho’s Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into better-known figures like George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities.

Together, these portraits in political courage tell a story about the triumphs and failures of the progressive idea over the past century. In the 1930s and 1960s, and more intermittently since, politicians and the public successfully fought against entrenched special interests and advanced the causes of economic and racial fairness. Today, these advances are in peril as employers shirk their responsibilities to employees and communities and a U.S. president gives cover to bigotry. But, Brown argues, the progressive idea is not dead. Recalling his own career, Brown dramatizes the hard work and high ideals required to renew the social contract and enable Americans of all backgrounds to once again know the “dignity of work.”

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