The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis.(Brief article)(Book review)

The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis

Ira Shapiro. PublicAffairs, $34.99 (496p) ISBN 978-1-58648-936-6

At a time when the hapless U.S. Congress has received low approval ratings, Shapiro, a former Senate staffer and now an international trade lawyer, looks back at a golden era of lawmakers who performed admirably in a period of domestic and foreign crisis in the late 1970s. Using Capitol Hill documents, media accounts, and interviews with congressional and White House officials, he shows this was a time of active legislators on both sides of the aisle putting aside partisanship and ideology to create a national energy formula, strengthen …