"Across the South the latter third of the 20th Century was a time of fundamental political transition. Tennessee typified this historic shift from "blue state to red state" as increasing numbers of voters began to chose candidates of the Republican Party. Yet in the heart of this phase, the 1980s and 90s saw a flourishing of reform-focused policymaking - from better schools, to improved highways, to health care - that was the handiwork of moderate leaders of both parties with a capacity to work together "across the aisle." The Tennessee story, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham observes in his foreword to this new book, offers striking examples of bipartisan cooperation on many policy fronts - and a mode of governing that provides lessons for America in this current time of partisan stalemate"--.