In Strom, Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson deliver a remarkable look at the life of the remarkable - and complicated - politician, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, 20th century America's most enduring political figure. First elected to public office in 1929, Strom Thurmond was a pivotal figure in the nation's politics for more than six decades, particularly when it came to issues of race: he was the Dixiecrat presidential candidate in 1948, a drafter of the 1956 "Southern Manifesto" against the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, holder of the record for a Senate filibuster-twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes for a speech opposing the 1957 Civil Rights Bill. Yet as a young man Thurmond had fathered a daughter with his family's black maid, and he quietly helped support this daughter for much of her life. Conservative, maverick, family man, ladies man-an intense public examination of Thurmond's legacy began when he left the Senate at age 100 in January 2003, continued when he passed away soon after, and only grew when Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a seventy-eight-year-old former schoolteacher living in Los Angeles, California, publicly announced in December 2003 that she was the senator's long-rumored black daughter. (Marilyn Thompson was the first reporter that Mrs. Washington-Williams contacted with this announcement, leading to a Thompson exclusive in the Washington Post.

) Bass and Thompson are authorities on Senator Thurmond and, in Strom, explain how the senator's keen political skills and instincts enabled him to hold his office for so many years, how he made himself beloved and indispensable to so many constituents, and provide a fascinating tour of 20th century America's politics. With access to and interviews with Mrs. Washington-Williams for the book, they deliver a remarkable, well-rounded portrait of these public and private lives. This is a thorough and revelatory look into this life and career, a history that tells us so much about power, politics, and race in our nation.