Politics, Title IX, The 25th Amendment, And Beyond

I began working for Birch Bayh, United States Senator from Indiana, as a freshman in college.  After thirteen years working for him, I came to fully understand the substantial contributions he made to the country.  I conducted more than 30 hours of video interviews with Senator Bayh for this book and also interviewed sitting and former Senators as well as a large number of former Bayh staff people and political allies.

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His story is an inspiring one... a farm boy from Shirkieville, Indiana who became the youngest Speaker in the Indiana House of Representatives.  Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, he served for 18 years and became the author of Title IX, the Bayh-Dole Act, the Juvenile Justice Act, the Runaway Youth Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act plus the 25th and 26th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  As the only person since the founding fathers to author more than one Constitutional Amendment, he was also the author and Senate floor leader of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment and the Direct Election Amendment, which would have abolished the Electoral College. 

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His story is one of tremendous personal accomplishment but also a story about an era when things worked in government and the Senate was a dynamic institution for change in America.